Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.

The essence of humor is sensibility; warm, tender fellow-feeling with all forms of existence.

In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's Priest; -- guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time.

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility; it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh vast gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the living banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God?

In a certain sense all men are historians.

A true delineation of the smallest man is capable of interesting the greatest man.