What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

That is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual; the wise man wonders at the usual.

If there be any man who thinks the ruin of a race of men a small matter, compared with the last decoration and completions of hisown comfort,--who would not so much as part with his ice- cream, to save them from rapine and manacles, I think I must not hesitate to satisfy that man that also his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper by placing the negro nation on a fair footing than by robbing them.

I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth.

Women see better than men. Men see lazily, if they do not expect to act. Women see quite without any wish to act.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.