Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life

We are mere bundles of habits.

The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.

Nature in her unfathomable designs had mixed us of clay and flame, of brain and mind, that the two things hang indubitably together and determine each other's being but how or why, no mortal may ever know.

If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first; but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man.