The material of thought re-acts upon the thought itself.

Most religion-mongers have bated their paradises with a bit of toasted cheese. They have tempted the body with large promises of possessions in their transmortal El Dorado. Sancho Panza will not quit his chimney-corner, but under promise of imaginary islands to govern.

To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious, gift of life.

No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being; that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.

The ultimate result of protecting fools from their folly is to fill the planet full of fools.

Reading Chaucer is like brushing through the dewy grass at sunrise.

They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.