We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise.

But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with truth and God.

Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood?

Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance.

True wit never made us laugh.

There is no history; only biography.

...What torments of pain have you endured that haven't as yet arrived? and may never!