All stealing is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who does not steal.

Do not speak of God much. After a very little conversation on the highest nature, thought deserts us and we run into formalism.

Fear always springs from ignorance.

Real men don't conform to the beliefs of others, even when society has concluded on what is good and true, but maintain the integrity of their own mind.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers.

Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever.