Of all God's creatures, Man alone is poor.

The great silent man! Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world,--words with little meaning, actions with little worth,--one loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence.

The insignificant, the empty, is usually the loud; and after the manner of a drum, is louder even because of its emptiness.

All human things do require to have an ideal in them; to have some soul in them.

All work, even cotton-spinning, is noble; work is alone noble.

Of our thinking it is but the upper surface that we shape into articulate thought; underneath the region of argument and conscious discourse lies the region of meditation.

What, in the devil's name, is the use of respectability, with never so many gigs and silver spoons, if thou inwardly art the pitifulness of all men?