“Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.”
“Solitude is as needed to the imagination as society is wholesome to the character.”
“An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.”
“Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.”
“What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.”
“It is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves.”
“A reading machine, always wound up and going, he mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.”
“The true ideal is not opposed to the real but lies in it; and blessed are the eyes that find it.”
“It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.”
“The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.”
“It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence.”
“Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never happen.”
“Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle.”
“There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.”
“Sentiment is intellectualized emotion; emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.”
“Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime . Not failure, but low aim is crime.”
“Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.”
“True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.”
“Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.”
“I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.”
“Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.”
“Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character.”
“There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.”
“They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.”
“Once to every person and nation come the moment to decide. In the conflict of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.”
“Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day, which must be done, whether you like it or not.”
“Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.”
“As life runs on, the road grows strange with faces new -- and near the end. The milestones into headstones change, Neath every one a friend.”
“It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.”
“The question of common sense is ''what is it good for?'' A question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage.”