I find nothing so singular to life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.

it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.

And there I sat, long long ago, waiting for the world to know me.

Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream

Men of cold passions have quick eyes.

'What is the Unpardonable Sin' asked the lime-burner 'It is a sin that grew within my own breast', replied Ethan Brand 'The sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God'.