Our mistakes and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have accomplished and attained.

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.

The suffering may be moral or physical; and in my opinion it is just as absurd to call a man a coward who destroys himself, as to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever.

Every reader, if he has a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with those of the author.

Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.

Few rash of any modern nation have a proper sense of an aesthetical whole; they praise and blame by parts; they are charmed by passages. And who has greater reason to rejoice in this than actors, since the stage is ever but a patched and piecemeal matter?

Every situation--nay, every moment--is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.