If there be not a religious element in the relations of men, such relations are miserable and doomed to ruin.

In private life I never knew anyone interfere with other people's disputes but he heartily repented of it.

You can make even a parrot into a learned political economist - all he must learn are the two words "supply" and "demand."

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?

We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

Clever men are good, but they are not the best.