The inborn geniality of some people amounts to genius.

Every style formed elaborately on any model must be affected and straight-laced.

The universal line of distinction between the strong and the weak is that one persists; the other hesitates, falters, trifles, and at last collapses or "caves in.

A nation may be in a tumult to-day for a thought which the timid Erasmus placidly penned in his study more than two centuries ago.

In most old communities there is a common sense even in sensuality. Vice itself gets gradually digested into a system, is amenable to certain laws of conventional propriety and honor, has for its object simply the gratification of its appetites, and frowns with quite a conservative air on all new inventions, all untried experiments in iniquity.

Cheerfulness in most cheerful people is the rich and satisfying result of strenuous discipline.

A large portion of human beings live not so much in themselves as in what they desire to be. They create what is called an ideal character, in an ideal form, whose perfections compensate in some degree for the imperfections of their own.