Love's secrets, being mysteries, ever pertain to the transcendent and the infinite; and so they are as airy bridges, by which ourfurther shadows pass over into the regions of the golden mists and exhalations; whence all poetical, lovely thoughts are engendered, and drop into us, as though pearls should drop from rainbows.

I never fancied broiling fowls; - though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will.

A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.

Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend; and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton.

And the visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.

When the passage "All men are born free and equal," when that passage was being written were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves?

He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers,--it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small.