There is no event greater in life than the appearance of new persons about our hearth, except it be the progress of the characterwhich draws them.

The peace of the man who has forsworn the use of the bullet seems to me not quite peace, but a canting impotence.

Life has no memory. That which proceeds in succession might be remembered, but that which is coexistent, or ejaculated from a deeper cause, as yet far from being conscious, knows not its own tendency.

Generalization is always a new influx of divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends it.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth, but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should be undone.

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept or if you have slept or if you have head ache or sciatica or leprosy or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace and not pollute the morning.