As men neither fear nor respect what has been made contemptible, all honor to him who makes oppression laughable as well as detestable. Armies cannot protect it then; and walls which have remained impenetrable to cannon have fallen before a roar of laughter or a hiss of contempt.

Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty.

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

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

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

Pretension is nothing; power is everything.

A man of letters is often a man with two natures,--one a book nature, the other a human nature. These often clash sadly.