Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading?

It is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much to their minds, but that a little money or fame would commonly buy them off from their present pursuit.

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.

As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music.

Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law.

In clear weather the laziest may look across the Bay as far as Plymouth at a glance, or over the Atlantic as far as human vision reaches, merely raising his eyelids; or if he is too lazy to look after all, he can hardly help hearing the ceaseless dash and roar of the breakers. The restless ocean may at any moment cast up a whale or a wrecked vessel at your feet. All the reporters in the world, the most rapid stenographers, could not report the news it brings.

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.