Every noble crown is, and on Earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.

A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.

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.

Cash-payment is not the sole nexus of man with man.

Unity, agreement, is always silent or soft-voiced; it is only discord that loudly proclaims itself.

Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows' meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they call their flag; which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen?

Nature, after all, is still the grand agent in making poets.