There is hope in extravagance, there is none in routine.

The influence of fine scenery, the presence of mountains, appeases our irritations and elevates our friendships.

The vanishing, volatile froth of the present which any shadow will alter, any thought blow away, any event annihilate, is every moment converted into the adamantine.

We ask for long life, but 'tis deep life, or noble moments that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.

No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.

When we attempt to define and describe God, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages.

I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. ... All that interests in any character [is this]: has he (or she) the money to marry with? ... Suicide is more respectable.