True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting empires, - Necessity and Free Will.

Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

This is the eternal law of Nature for a man, my beneficent Exeter-Hall friends; this, that he shall be permitted, encouraged, and if need be, compelled to do what work the Maker of him has intended by the making of him for this world! Not that he should eat pumpkin with never such felicity in the West India Islands is, or can be, the blessedness of our Black friend; but that he should do useful work there, according as the gifts have been bestowed on him for that.

Books are a triviality. Life alone is great.

A lie should be trampled on and extinguished wherever found. I am for fumigating the atmosphere when I suspect that falsehood, like pestilence, breathes around me.