Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being so rapidly added to the sum of human experience, that it appears as if the theorizer would always be in arrears, and were doomed forever to arrive at imperfect conclusion; but the power to perceive a law is equally rare in all ages of the world, and depends but little on the number of facts observed.

But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire.... The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.

Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild - not tamed and broken by society.

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow.

I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.

I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.

Much is published, but little printed.