No good book or good thing of any kind shows it best face at first. No the most common quality of in a true work of art that has excellence and depth, is that at first sight it produces a certain disappointment.

Great men are the commissioned guides of mankind, who rule their fellows because they are wiser.

A background of wrath, which can be stirred up to the murderous infernal pitch, does lie in every man.

The scandalous bronze-lacquer age of hungry animalisms, spiritual impotences, and mendacities, will have to run its course, till the pit follow it.

Have a purpose in life, and having it, throw into your work such strength of mind and muscle as God has given you.

Habit and imitation--there is nothing more perennial in us than these two. They are the source of all working, and all apprenticeship, of all practice, and all learning, in this world.

A poor creature who has said or done nothing worth a serious man taking the trouble of remembering.