Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to man, youth never.

All my experience of the world teaches me that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the safe and just side of a question is the generous and merciful side.

Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords - philosophy, art, poetry, love, scandal, and the weather.

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of the mind, for the moment realizes itself.

In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.

Genius and sunshine have this in common that they are the two most precious gifts of heaven to earth, and are dispensed equally to the just and the unjust.

Nature and truth are one, and immutable, and inseparable as beauty and love.

The moment one begins to solder right and wrong together, one's conscience becomes like a piece of plated goods.

Satan--the impersonation of that mixture of the bestial, the malignant, the impious, and the hopeless, which constitute the fiend--the enemy of all that is human and divine.

As what we call genius arises out of the disproportionate power and size of a certain faculty, so the great difficulty lies in harmonizing with it the rest of the character.