To certain temperaments, especially when previously agitated by any deep feeling, there is perhaps nothing more exasperating, andwhich sooner explodes all self-command, than the coarse, jeering insolence of a porter, cabman, or hack-driver.

...The silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the presence of delight.

Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.

Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.

Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.

Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.

The profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelop of the storm, and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion.