“In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.”
“Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.”
“There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.”
“Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.”
“A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.”
“The power which resides in man is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”
“Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.”
“Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.”
“Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.”
“Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is due to the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it.”
“By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.”
“The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.”
“A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.”
“When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new.”
“Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.”
“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”
“The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed, there is no winter and no night; all tragedies, all ennui s, vanish, all duties even.”
“There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it.”
“I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable -- any real insight or broad human sentiment.”
“Curses always recoil on the head of him who imprecates them. If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.”
“He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.”
“Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.”
“There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.”
“Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.”
“Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful; every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.”
“Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.”
“There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it.”
“Our faith comes in moments... yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.”
“As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.”
“It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.”