My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.

In the right hands, literature is not resorted to as a consolation, and by the broken and decayed, but as a decalogue.

A right rule for a club would be, Admit no man whose presence excludes any one topic. It requires people who are not surprised andshocked, who do and let do, and let be, who sink trifles, and know solid values, and who take a great deal for granted.

Life must be lived on a higher plane. We must go up to a higher platform, to which we are always invited to ascend; there, the whole aspect of things changes.

Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.

Our globe discovers its bidden virtues, not only in heroes and arch-angels, but in gossips and nurses.

Outside among your fellows, among strangers, you must preserve appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom.