Fire is the best of servants, but what a master!

Our very walking is an incessant falling; a falling and a catching of ourselves before we come actually to the pavement. It is emblematic of all things a man does.

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.

Laughter is the cipher key wherewith we decipher the whole man

Experience takes dreadfully high school-wages, but he teaches like no other.

Armed Soldier, terrible as Death, relentless as Doom; doing God's judgement on the Enemies of God. It is a phenomenon not of joyful nature; no, but of awful, to be looked at with pious terror and awe.

The first purpose of clothes... was not warmth or decency, but ornament.... Among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration; as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries.