There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting than the text. The world is one of those books.

Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape.

For a man who has done his natural duty, death is as natural as sleep.

It is one thing to lack a heart and another to possess eyes and a just imagination.

There is no tyranny so hateful as a vulgar and anonymous tyranny. It is all-permeating, all-thwarting; it blasts every budding novelty and sprig of genius with its omnipresent and fierce stupidity. Such a headless people has the mind of a worm and the claws of a dragon.

If a man really knew himself he would utterly despise the ignorant notions others might form on a subject in which he had such matchless opportunities for observation.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.