The most active lives have so much routine as to preclude progress almost equally with the most inactive.

There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things.

An actually existing fly is more important than a possibly existing angel.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.

Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never shines in which this element may not work.

Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all its beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that of walking, is added.