Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural.

If anything can be invented more excruciating than an English Opera, such as was the fashion at the time I was in London, I am sure no sin of mine deserves the punishment of bearing it.

Pain has no effect but to steal some of my time.

I stand in the sunny noon of life. Objects no longer glitter in the dews of morning, neither are yet softened by the shadows of evening.

There exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves.

This is the method of genius, to ripen fruit for the crowd by those rays of whose heat they complain.

Truth is the first of jewels.