When there is an old maid in the house, a watchdog is unnecessary.

Towns find it as hard as houses of business to rise again from ruin.

Virtue is not a thing you can have by halves; it is or it is not.

When one has no particular talent for anything, one takes to the pen.

If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one ... he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.

If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.

Too great a display of delicacy can and does sometimes infringe upon de-cency.