We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice. Where is the skillful swordsman who can give clean wounds, and not rip up his work with the other edge?

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.

We love to hear some men speak, though we hear not what they say; the very air they breathe is rich and perfumed, and the sound of their voices falls on the ear like the rustling of leaves or the crackling of the fire. They stand many deep.

As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening.

We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.

How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?