Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
He would make a lovely corpse.
There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.
When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.
The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.
May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?
There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.
Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.
It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.
You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!
Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It’s so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy.
There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair.
No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.
Trifles make the sum of life.
Death may beget life, but oppression can beget nothing other than itself.
Other sound than the owl’s voice there was none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again.
Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.
There was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.
I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil.