To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master.

It is wiser to find out than to suppose.

The old saw says, 'Let a sleeping dog lie.' Right. Still, when there is much at stake it is better to get a newspaper to do it.

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.

[On Dutch flat poetry]: It is too smooth and blubbery; it reads like butter-milk gurgling from a jug.

We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.