The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

In Europe life is histrionic and dramatized, and in America, except when it is trying to be European, it is direct and sincere.

The swelling and towering omnibuses, the huge trucks and wagons and carriages, the impetuous hansoms and the more sobered four-wheelers, the pony-carts, donkey-carts, hand-carts, and bicycles which fearlessly find their way amidst the turmoil, with foot-passengers winding in and out, and covering the sidewalks with their multitude, give the effect of a single monstrous organism, which writhes swiftly along the channel where it had run in the figure of a flood till you were tired of that metaphor. You are now a molecule of that vast organism.

Preach the blessings of our deeply incorporated civilization by the mouths of our eight-inch guns.

The disposition to give a cup of cold water to a disciple is a far nobler property than the finest intellect. Satan has a fine intellect, but not the image of God.

The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.

The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.