The words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them.

I couldn't live in peace if I put the shadow of a willful sin between myself and God.

It’s rather a strong check to one’s self-complacency to find how much of one’s right doing depends on not being in want of money.

There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet.

A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar, unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge.

One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.

I have nothing to tell except travellers' stories, which are always tiresome, like the description of a play which was very exciting to those who saw it.