You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.

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

It is not the purpose of literature to purvey news. For news consult the Almanac de Gotha.

Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, he is not the Lord of this; for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him; so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.

The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

Until we understand that our grief outweighs a thousand joys, we will never understand what Christianity is all about.

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