Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

Metaphysics,--the science which determines what can and what cannot be known of being and the laws of being.

Why is it that so many of us persist in thinking that autumn is a sad season? Nature has merely fallen asleep, and her dreams must be beautiful if we are to judge by her countenance.

We have to administer the law whether we like it or no.

This is the course of every evil deed, that, propagating still it brings forth evil.

A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind.

I must reject fluids and ethers of all kinds, magnetical, electrical, and universal, to whatever quintessential thinness they may be treble distilled, and as it were super-substantiated.