In the utmost solitudes of nature, the existence of hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand spiritual utterances as that of heaven.

I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature-not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor.

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.

What we think or what we know or what we believe is in the end of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do

The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as the greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.

The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them.

God shows us in Himself, strange as it may seem, not only authoritative perfection, but even the perfection of obedience--an obedience to His own laws; and in the cumbrous movement of those unwieldiest of his creatures we are reminded, even in His divine essence, of that attribute of uprightness in the human creature "that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not.