A writer of story books! What kind of business in life-what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation-may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!

The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life.

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!

When scattered clouds are resting on the bosoms of hills, it seems as if one might climb into the heavenly region, earth being so intermixed with sky, and gradually transformed into it.

Nobody will use other people's experience, nor have any of his own till it is too late to use it.

Sunlight is like the breath of life to the pomp of autumn.

Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehoods, or betrays its emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal.