Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.

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

Whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves.

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.

Nature has not implanted any power in man that was not meant to be exercised at times, though too often our powers have been abused.

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

In the operative opinion of the world, he who is already fully provided with what is necessary for him, that man shall have more;while he who is deplorably destitute of the same, he shall have taken away from him even that which he hath. Yet the world vows it is a very plain, downright matter-of-fact, plodding, humane sort of world.