We are not free to use today, or to promise tomorrow, because we are already mortgaged to yesterday.

Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much.

War, to sane men at the present day, begins to look like an epidemic insanity, breaking out here and there like the cholera or influenza, infecting men's brains instead of their bowels.

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.

Wouldst thou shut up the avenues of ill, Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.

Each truth that a writer acquires is a lantern, which he turns full on what facts and thoughts lay already in his mind, and behold, all the mats and rubbish which had littered his garret become precious. Every trivial fact in his private biography becomes an illustration of this new principle, revisits the day, and delights all men by its piquancy and new charm.

Meek young men grow up in colleges and believe it is their duty to accept the views which books have given, and grow up slaves.