Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

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.

Two meanings have our lightest fantasies,- One of the flesh, and of the spirit one.

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

Better one bite at forty, of truths bitter rind, than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty.

It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is...

There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.