In their daily life, all are braver than they know.

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.

The startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day.

No doubt Carlyle has a propensity to exaggerate the heroic in history, that is, he creates you an ideal hero rather than another thing.... Yet what were history if he did not exaggerate it? How comes it that history never has to wait for facts, but for a man to write it? The ages may go on forgetting the facts never so long, he can remember two for every one forgotten. The musty records of history, like the catacombs, contain the perishable remains, but only in the breast of genius are embalmed the souls of heroes.

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.

Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, which in others are luxuries merely and in others still are entirely unknown.

Any sincere thought is irresistible.