You can imagine thistle-down so light that when you run after it your running motion would drive it away from you, and that the more you tried to catch it the faster it would fly from your grasp. And it should be with every man, that, when he is chased by troubles, they, chasing, shall raise him higher and higher.

One should go to sleep as homesick passengers do, saying, "Perhaps in the morning we shall see the shore.

The hunger of the eye is not to be despised; and they are to be pitied who have starvation of the eye.

Titles are too "thin" for the nineteenth century.

Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry. If he has charged you with anything, you had better look it up.

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game.

In the morning, we carry the world like Atlas; at noon, we stoop and bend beneath it; and at night, it crushes us flat to the ground.