The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

You can make even a parrot into a learned political economist - all he must learn are the two words "supply" and "demand."

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

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

By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.

The soul gives unity to what it looks at with love.

Taste, if it mean anything but a paltry connoisseurship, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness, a sense to discern, and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever, or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments they are to be seen. This surely implies, as its chief condition, not any given external rank or situation, but a finely-gifted mind, purified into harmony with itself, into keenness and justness of vision; above all, kindled into love and generous admiration.