Best masters for the young writer and speaker are the fault- finding brothers and sisters at home who will not spare him, but willpick and cavil, and tell the odious truth.

Nature is no sentimentalist, - does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mailbag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay.

All public facts are to be individualized, all private facts are to be generalized.

Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think, and those who cause others to think.

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.