A fiction which is designed to inculcate an object wholly alien to the imagination sins against the first law of art; and if a writer of fiction narrow his scope to particulars so positive as polemical controversy in matters ecclesiastical, political or moral, his work may or may not be an able treatise, but it must be a very poor novel.

In belief lies the secret of all valuable exertion.

Art does not imitate nature, but founds itself on the study of nature, takes from nature the selections which best accord with its own intention, and then bestows on them that which nature does not possess, viz: The mind and soul of man.

How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism.

There is but one philosophy and its name is fortitude! To bear is to conquer our fate.

Never get a reputation for a small perfection if you are trying for fame in a loftier area. The world can only judge by generals, and it sees that those who pay considerable attention to minutiae seldom have their minds occupied with great things.

It is not by the gray of the hair that one knows the age of the heart.