No town can fail of beauty, though its walks were gutters and its houses hovels, if venerable trees make magnificent colonnades along its streets.

What place is so rugged and so homely that there is no beauty; if you only have a sensibility to beauty?

A man that puts himself on the ground of moral principle, if the whole world be against him, is mightier than all of them.

If a man has come to that point where he is no content that he says; I do not want to know any more, or do any more or be any more, he is in a state in which he ought to be changed into a mummy.

There are some men's souls that are so thin, so almost destitute of what is the true idea of soul, that were not the guardian angels so keen-sighted, they would altogether overlook them.

This world is not a platform where you will hear Thalberg-piano-playing. It is a piano manufactory, where are dust and shavings and boards, and saws and files and rasps and sandpapers. The perfect instrument and the music will be hereafter.

The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.