Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.

The Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots.

If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly.... You are paid for being something less than a man. The state does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe.

A truly good book attracts very little favor to itself. It is so true that it teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down and commence living on its hint. When I read an indifferent book, it seems the best thing I can do, but the inspiring volume hardly leaves me leisure to finish its latter pages. It is slipping out of my fingers while I read. It creates no atmosphere in which it may be perused, but one in which its teachings may be practiced. It confers on me such wealth that I lay it down with regret. What I began by reading I must finish by acting.

Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman.

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