It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.

I told that girl, in the kindest, gentlest way, that I could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because an individual's verdict was worthless. It might underrate a work of high merit and lose it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production and so open the way for its infliction upon the world. I said that the great public was the only tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort, and therefore it must be best to lay it before that tribunal in the outset, since in the end it must stand or fall by that mighty court's decision any way.

Do right and you will be conspicuous.

This is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon, the most satisfying to the eye and spirit. To see the sun sink down, drowned in his pink and purple and golden floods, and overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim and faint and turn the solid city to a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the coldest nature, and make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.

When one's character begins to fall under suspicion and disfavor, how swift, then, is the work of disintegration and destruction.

If smoking cigars is not permitted in heaven, I won''t go.

The exquisitely bad is as satisfying to the soul as the exquisitely good. Only the mediocre is unendurable.