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

Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven.

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

Skepticism . . . is not intellectual only it is moral also, a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul.

And there are Ben [Jonson] and William Shakespeare in wit-combat, sure enough; Ben bearing down like a mighty Spanish war-ship, fraught with all learning and artillery; Shakespeare whisking away from him - whisking right through him, athwart the big bulk and timbers of him; like a miraculous Celestial Light-ship, woven all of sheet-lightning and sunbeams!

Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its powers of endurance.

Contented saturnine human figures, a dozen or so of them, sitting around a large long table...Perfect equality is to be the rule; no rising or notice taken when anybody enters or leaves. Let the entering man take his place and pipe, without obligatory remarks; if he cannot smoke...let him at least affect to do so, and not ruffle the established stream of things.