Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!
The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of men.
A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.
The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.
There is something truer and more real, than what we can see with the eyes, and touch with the finger.
Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.
No, my little Pearl! Thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give thee.
All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests.
There is no such thing in man’s nature as a settled and full resolve either for good or evil, except at the very moment of execution.
Who can tell where happiness may come, or where, though an expected guest, it may never show its face?
Such has often been my apathy, when objects long sought, and earnestly desired, were placed within my reach.
In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago.
Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these.
But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.
The inward pleasure of imparting pleasure – that is the choicest of all.
Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream.
A writer of story books! What kind of business in life-what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation-may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!
It is because the spirit is inestimable, that the lifeless body is so little valued.
As the moral gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gaiety, even so was their home of wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest.
One picture in ten thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of mankind, from generation to generation until the colors fade and blacken out of sight or the canvas rot entirely away.