There seems to be an unalterable contradiction between the human mind and its employments. How can a soul be a merchant? What relation to an immortal being have the price of linseed, the brokerage on hemp? Can an undying creature debit petty expenses and charge for carriage paid? The soul ties its shoes; the mind washes its hands in a basin. All is incongruous.

A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.

The peculiar essence of our banking system is an unprecedented trust between man and man. And when that trust is much weakened by hidden causes, a small accident may greatly hurt it, and a great accident for a moment may almost destroy it.

In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.