There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.

If the devil take a less hateful shape to us than to our fathers, he is as busy with us as with them.

Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.

A stray hair, by its continued irritation, may give more annoyance than a smart blow.

Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief.

He gives only the worthless gold who gives from a sense of duty.

It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind.