The trouble with men of sense is that they are so dreadfully in earnest all the while.
There is no sense of weariness like that which closes in a day of eager and unintermittent pursuit of pleasure. The apple is eaten, but “the core sticks in the throat.” Expectation has then given way to ennui, appetite to satiety.
At the best, sarcasms, bitter irony, scathing wit, are a sort of swordplay of the mind. You pink your adversary, and he is forthwith dead; and then you deserve to be hung for it.
A genuine passion is like a mountain stream; it admits of no impediment; it cannot go backward; it must go forward.
Marriage, by making us more contented, causes us often to be less enterprising.
The nearest approximation to an understanding of life is to feel it – to realize it to the full – to be a profound and inscrutable mystery.
The worth of a book is a matter of expressed juices.
Fortune, like a coy mistress, loves to yield her favors, though she makes us wrest them from her.
The next best thing to being witty one’s self, is to be able to be able to quote another’s wit.
Woman’s power is over the affections. A beautiful dominion is hers; but she risks its forfeiture when she seeks to extend it.
Adhesion to one idea is monomania; to few, slavery.
Next to faith in God, is faith in labor.
Rejecting the miracles of Christ, we still have the miracle of Christ Himself.
It may almost be held that the hope of commercial gain has done nearly as much for the cause of truth as even the love of truth.
Complaint is. more contemptible than pitiful.
Dignity of position adds to dignity of character, as well as to dignity of carriage. Give us a proud position, and we are impelled to act up to it.
It is of very little use in trying to be dignified, if dignity is no part of your character.
Earnestness is the devotion of all the faculties.
Kindred weaknesses induce friendships as often as kindred virtues.
Truth comes to us from the past, as gold is washed down from the mountains of Sierra Nevada, in minute but precious particles, and intermixed with infinite alloy, the debris of the centuries.