Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

The great man, that is, the man most imbued with the spirit of the time, is the impressionable man.

I find nothing in fables more astonishing than my experience in every hour. One moment of a man's life is a fact so stupendous as to take the luster out of fiction.

All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.

I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?

A man's action is only a poicture book of his creed.