Tobacco smoke is the one element in which, by our European manners, men can sit silent together without embarrassment, and where no man is bound to speak one word more than he has actually and veritably got to say. Nay, rather every man is admonished and enjoined by the laws of honor, and even of personal ease, to stop short of that point; and at all events to hold his peace and take to his pipe again the instant he has spoken his meaning, if he chance to have any.

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

A person with half volition goes backwards and forwards, but makes no progress on even the smoothest of roads.

Oblivion is the dark page, whereon Memory writes her light-beam characters, and makes them legible; were it all light, nothing could be read there, any more than if it were all darkness.

Of all the paths a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path .. A thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to do .. To find this path, and walk in it, is the one thing needful for him.

Let me have my own way in exactly everything and a sunnier and pleasanter creature does not exist.

There is but one temple in this Universe: The Body. We speak to God whenever we lay our hands upon it.