Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing, and insults the philosopher in every moment with a million fresh particulars.

The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

All men are poets at heart. They serve nature for bread, but her loveliness overcomes them sometimes.

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept or if you have slept or if you have head ache or sciatica or leprosy or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace and not pollute the morning.

It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle; as if conscience were not good for hands and legs.

For the world was built in order around the atoms march in tune; Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder, The sun obeys them, and the moon.

Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.