The discontent with the existing order of things pervaded the atmosphere, wherever the conditions were favorable, long before Columbus, seeking the back door of Asia, found himself knocking at the front door of America.
Most religion-mongers have bated their paradises with a bit of toasted cheese. They have tempted the body with large promises of possessions in their transmortal El Dorado. Sancho Panza will not quit his chimney-corner, but under promise of imaginary islands to govern.
The very gnarliest and hardest of hearts has some musical strings in it; but they are tuned differently in every one of us.
The riches of scholarship, the benignities of literature, defy fortune and outlive calamity. They are beyond the reach of thief or moth or rust. As they cannot be inherited, so they cannot, be alienated.
Life is constantly weighing us in very sensitive scales, and telling every one of us precisely what his real weight is to the last grain of dust.
Love lives on, and hath a power to bless when they who loved are hidden in the grave.
The path of nature is, indeed, a narrow one, and it is only the immortals that seek it, and, when they find it, do not find themselves cramped therein.
While tenderness of feeling and susceptibility to generous emotions are accidents of temperament, goodness is an achievement of the will and a quality of the life.
God’s livery is a very plain one; but its wearers have good reason to be content. If it have not so much gold-lace about it as Satan’s, it keeps out foul weather better, and is besides a great deal cheaper.
O reputation! dearer far than life.
Large charity doth never soil, but only whitens soft white hands.
Comparative criticism teaches us that moral and aesthetic defects are more nearly related than is commonly supposed.
Fashion being the art of those who must purchase notice at some cheaper rate than that of being beautiful, loves to do rash and extravagant things. She must be forever new, or she becomes insipid.
Who is it needs such flawless shafts as fate? What archer of his arrows is so choice, or hits the white so surely?
Be He nowhere else, God is in all that liberates and lifts, in all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles.
Scepticism commonly takes up the room left by defect of imagination, and is the very quality of mind most likely to seek for sensual proof of supersensual things. If one came from the dead it could not believe; and yet it longs for such a witness, and will put up with a very dubious one.
That cause is strong which has, not a multitude, but one strong man behind it.
Wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.
Who speaks the truth stabs falsehood to the heart.
Old events have modern meanings; only that survives of past history which finds kindred in all hearts and lives.