How we shall earn our bread is a grave question; yet it is a sweet and inviting question. Let us not shirk it, as is usually done.It is the most important and practical question which is put to man. Let us not answer it hastily. Let us not be content to get our bread in some gross, careless, and hasty manner. Some men go a-hunting, some a-fishing, some a-gaming, some to war; but none have so pleasant a time as they who in earnest seek to earn their bread.

But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire.... The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.

The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like burrs.

Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge college is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.

Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.