Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such; it is an accident, not a property of man.

Eyes bright, with many tears, behind them.

Time is the silent, never-resting thing ... rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing oceantide, on which we and all the universe swim.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity.

What is nature? Art thou not the living government of God? O Heaven, is it in very deed He then that ever speaks through thee, that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me?