Even trees do not die without a groan.

It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that drills him.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.

Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of.

When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world, but none of the recording, a mere accumulated, and not trulycumulative treasure; where immortal works stand side by side with anthologies which did not survive their month, and cobweb and mildew have already spread from these to the binding of those; and happily I am reminded of what poetry is,--I perceive that Shakespeare and Milton did not foresee into what company they were to fall. Alas! that so soon the work of a true poet should be swept into such a dust-hole!

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.