The purity of the critical ermine, like that of the judicial, is often soiled by contact with politics.

A writer who attempts to live on the manufacture of his imagination is continually coquetting with starvation.

The familiar writer is apt to be his own satirist. Out of his own mouth is he judged.

The contemplation of beauty in nature, in art, in literature, in human character, diffuses through our being a soothing and subtle joy, by which the heart's anxious and aching cares are softly smiled away.

Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment.

We all originally came from the woods! it is hard to eradicate from any of us the old taste for the tattoo and the war-paint; and the moment that money gets into our pockets, it somehow or another breaks out in ornaments on our person, without always giving refinement to our manners.

There is a serious and resolute egotism that makes a man interesting to his friends and formidable to his opponents.