The first lesson of life is to burn our own smoke; that is, not to inflict on outsiders our personal sorrows and petty morbidness, not to keep thinking of ourselves as exceptional cases.

A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.

Men's thoughts and opinions are in a great degree vassals of him who invents a new phrase or re-applies an old epithet. The thought or feeling a thousand times repeated becomes his at last who utters it best.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

At the devil's booth are all things sold. Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold.

Piety is indifferent whether she enters at the eye or at the ear. There is none of the senses at which she does not knock one day or other. The Puritans forgot this, and thrust Beauty out of the meeting-house and slammed the door in her face.

A man is old when he can pass an apple orchard and not remember the stomachache.