There are twenty ways of going to a point, and one is the shortest; but set out at once on one. A man who has that presence of mind which can bring to him on the instant all he knows, is worth for action a dozen men who know as much, but can only bring it to light slowly.

We want a state of things in which crime will not pay, a state of things which allows every man the largest liberty compatible with the liberty of every other man.

I like my boy with his endless sweet soliloquies and iterations and his utter inability to conceive why I should not leave all my nonsense, business, and writing and come to tie up his toy horse, as if there was or could be any end to nature beyond his horse. And he is wiser than we when [he] threatens his whole threat "I will not love you."

What is originality? It is being one's self, and reporting accurately what we see and are.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.

Every roof is agreeable to the eye, until it is lifted; then we find tragedy and moaning women, and hard-eyed husbands.