We love the beautiful and serene, but we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible and dark.

The most delicate beauty in the mind of women is, and ever must be, an independence of artificial stimulants for content. It is not so with men. The links that bind men to capitals belong to the golden chain of civilization,--the chain which fastens all our destinies to the throne of Jove. And hence the larger proportion of men in whom genius is pre-eminent have preferred to live in cities, though some of them have bequeathed to us the loveliest pictures of the rural scenes in which they declined to dwell.

The conscience is the most flexible material in the world. Today you cannot stretch it over a mole hill; while tomorrow it can hide a mountain.

Dandies, when first-rate, are generally very agreeable men.

We are not such fools as to pay for reading inferior books, when we can read superior books for nothing.

Thought is valuable in proportion as it is generative.

The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.