Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

All sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every contract to make the terms of it fair.

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive one.

For all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the few real hours of life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up into the vision of principles. We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had, in the dreary years of routine and of sin, with souls that made our souls wiser; that spoke what we thought; that told us what we knew; that gave us leave to be what we only were.

If you act, you show character; if you sit still, you show it; if you sleep you show it.

The genius is a genius by the first look he casts on any object. Is his eye creative? Does he not rest in angles and colors, but beholds the design,--he will presently undervalue the actual object.

Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought.