As a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner; and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, snivelling bit of saintship about him which is enough to make him a humbug.

Could we know by what strange circumstances a man's genius became prepared for practical success, we should discover that the most serviceable items in his education were never entered in the bills which his father paid for.

Though Hope be a small child, she can carry a great anchor!

The astronomer who catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to the universe; the poet can call an universe from the atom.

I have wrought great use out of evil tools.

The haughty woman who can stand alone, and requires no leaning-place in our hearts, loses the spell of her sex.

Art is the effort of man to express the ideas which nature suggests to him of a power above nature, whether that power be within the recesses of his own being, or in the Great First Cause of which nature, like himself, is but the effect.