Most people have died before they expire; died to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion.

But I have long thought that if you knew a column of advertisements by heart, you could achieve unexpected felicities with them. You can get a happy quotation anywhere if you have the eye.

Any tax is a discouragement and therefore a regulation so far as it goes.

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

There is something frightful in the way in which not only characteristic qualities, but particular manifestations of them, are repeated from generation to generation.

Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words.

Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues.