It is my deliberate opinion that the one essential requisite of human welfare in all ways is scientific knowledge of human nature.

[On being deaf:] We must struggle for whatever may be had, without encroaching on the comfort of others.

I am sure that no traveler seeing things through author spectacles can see them as they are.

When once experience taught me that I could work when I chose, and within a quarter of an hour of my determining to do so, I was relieved, in a great measure, from those embarrassments and depressions which I see afflicting many an author who waits for a mood instead of summoning it, and is the sport, instead of the master, of his own impressions and ideas.

The lesson taught us by these kindly commentators on my present experience is that dogmatic faith compels the best minds and hearts to narrowness and insolence.

it is the worst humiliation and grievance of the suffering, that they cause suffering.

[On being deaf:] We can never get beyond the necessity of keeping in full view the worst and the best that can be made of our lot. The worst is, either to sink under the trial, or to be made callous by it. The best is, to be as wise as is possible under a great disability, and as happy as is possible under a great privation.