I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination.

Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.

Appalling is the soul of a man! Better might one be pushed off into the material spaces beyond the uttermost orbit of our sun, than once feel himself fairly afloat in himself.

Students of history are horror-struck at the massacres of old; but in the shambles, men are being murdered to-day.

A thing may be incredible and still be true; sometimes it is incredible because it is true.

The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.

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.