Whatever else may be said of man, this one thing is clear: He is not what he is capable of being.

I have myself a poetical enthusiasm for pigs, and the paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings. But it is only men, especially wise men, who discuss whether pigs can fly; we have no particular proof that pigs ever discuss it.

...there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reason on the unforeseen.

Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing.

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.

The poor complain that they are governed badly. The rich complain that they are governed at all.

Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.