The first questions are always to be asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness of a child.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

There is nothing we value and hunt and cultivate and strive to draw to us, but in some hour we turn and rend it.

I didn't find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.

"Do not call yourself an "artist-photographer" and make "artist-painters" and "artist-sculptors" laugh; call yourself a photographer and wait for artists to call you brother."

Among the multitude of scholars and authors, we feel no hallowing presence; we are sensible of a knack and skill rather than of inspiration; they have a light, and know not whence it comes, and call it their own; their talent is some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown member, so that their strength is a disease.