In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial.

Art may varnish and gild, but it can do no more.

The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering for want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.

Here or nowhere is our heaven.

There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.

If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care.

When I think of the gold-diggers and the Mormons, the slaves and the slave-holders and the flibustiers, I naturally dream of a glorious private life. No, I am not patriotic.