There are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not man that can solve them.

The shadows of things are greater than themselves; and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike the substance.

A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.

People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward; but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day's work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably -why, then I don't think I deserve any reward for my hard day's work -for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good?

Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in town, to be sure.

There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.

There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things.