A small country town is not the place in which one would choose to quarrel with a wife; every human being in such places is a spy.

Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation.

Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings; let us be therefore cautious of how we strip her.

Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.

He that can swim needs not despair to fly; to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to swim in a subtler. We are only to proportion our power of resistance to the different density of matter through which we are to pass. You will be necessarily upborne by the air if you can renew any impulse upon it faster than the air can recede from the pressure.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most.