Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.

This ennui, for which we Saxons had no name,--this word of France, has got a terrific significance. It shortens life, and bereaves the day of its light.

A man should not go where he cannot carry his whole sphere or society with him,Mnot bodily, the whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically. He should preserve in a new company the same attitude of mind and reality of relation, which his daily associates draw him to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and will be an orphan in the merriest club.

Skepticism? Yes, but a saint is a skeptic once in twenty-four hours.

If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner.

Be a football to Time and Chance, the more kicks, the better, so that you inspect the whole game and know its utmost law.

I now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple, and all great pictures are.