Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.
A man’s whole life is taxed for the least thing well done. It is its net result.
We are ashamed of our fear; for we know that a righteous man would not suspect danger nor incur any. Wherever a man feels fear, there is an avenger.
The very thrills of genius are disorganizing. The body is never quite acclimated to its atmosphere, but how often, succumbs and goes into a decline.
Impulse is, after all, the best linguist; its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing.
Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, – as if the short spring days were an eternity.
In ancient days the Pythagoreans were used to change names with each other, – fancying that each would share the virtues they admired in the other.
We are all of us more or less active physiognomists.
The present hour is always wealthiest when it is poorer than the future ones, as that is the pleasantest site which affords the pleasantest prospect.
Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.
Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.
At least let us have healthy books.
The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones.
You must have a genius for charity as well as for anything else.
Even trees do not die without a groan.
Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic, and his trappings will have to serve that mood too.
When a soldier is hit by a cannonball, rags are as becoming as purple.
When I would go a-visiting, I find that I go off the fashionable street, – not being inclined to change my dress, – to where man meets man, and not polished shoe meets shoe.
At death our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart farther from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death.
I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable; but my friend is my amiableness personified.