An actor's life is the shadow of a cloud, the echo of a sound, the memory of a dream, nothing come of nothing. The finest actor does not create, he is but a translator of another man's work.

The plodding thrift and scrupulous integrity and long-winded patient industry of our business men of the last century are out of fashion in these "giddy-paced" times, and England is forgetting that those who make haste to be rich can hardly avoid much temptation and some sin.

In the north we could not hope to keep the worst and poorest servant for a single day in the wretched discomfort in which our negro servants are forced habitually to live.

... it's always determined characters who make the greatest fools.

American gentlemen are a cross between English and French men, and yet really altogether like neither. They are more refined and modest than Frenchmen, and less manly, shy, and rough, than Englishmen. Their brains are finer and flimsier, their bodies less robust and vigorous than ours. We are the finer animals, and they the subtler spirits. Their intellectual tendency is to excitement and insanity, and ours to stagnation and stupidity.

Modesty is a diamond setting to female beauty.

Assuredly of all earthly conditions uncertainty is the most unblest.