It is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety.

Allow me to offer my congratulations on the truly admirable skill you have shown in keeping clear of the mark. Not to have hit once in so many trials, argues the most splendid talents for missing.

It is one of the misfortunes in life that one must read thousands of books only to discover that one need not have read them.

As is the inventor of murder, and the father of art, Cain must have been a man of first-rate genius.

Often one's dear friend talks something which one scruples to call rigmarole.

War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered.

A great scholar, in the highest sense of the term, is not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination; bringing together from the four winds, like the Angel of the Resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life.