The essence of the ludicrous consists in surprise,--in unexpected terms of feeling and explosions of thought,--often bringing dissimilar things together with a shock; as when some wit called Boyle, the celebrated philosopher, the father of chemistry and brother of the Earl of Cork.

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

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

In activity we must find our joy as well as glory; and labor, like everything else that is good, is its own reward.

What a lesson, indeed, is all history and all life to the folly and fruitlessness of pride! The Egyptian kings had their embalmed bodies preserved in massive pyramids, to obtain an earthly immortality. In the seventeenth century they were sold as quack medicines, and now they are burnt for fuel! The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise.

Character is the spiritual body of the person, and represents the individualization of vital experience, the conversion of unconscious things into self-conscious men.

We like the fine extravagance of that philosopher who declared that no man was as rich as all men ought to be.