Wherever men have lived, there is a story to be told

We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention.

This is one of those instances in which the individual genius is found to consent, as indeed it always does, at last, with the universal.

The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile,... the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the annals of the world.

I expect a time when, or rather an integrity by which, a man will get his coat as honestly and as perfectly fitting as a tree itsbark. Now our garments are typical of our conformity to the ways of the world, i.e., of the devil, and to some extent react on us and poison us, like that shirt which Hercules put on.

Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought, go about doing good.

We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction even is only to take leisure and liberty to describe some things more exactly as they are.