For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly.

Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue,--is not that mine? His wit,--if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit.

It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.

Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see - not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.

Heaven is large, and affords space for all modes of love and fortitude.

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.