Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.

The health of the eye demands a horizon.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

Black men built the railroads, not blue eyes.

Every roof is agreeable to the eye, until it is lifted; then we find tragedy and moaning women, and hard-eyed husbands.

The art of conversation, or the qualification for a good companion, is a certain self-control, which now holds the subject, now lets it go, with a respect for the emergencies of the moment.

Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends.