Not yet hardened, many young die good.
We sometimes congratulate ourselves...
This above all: be true, be true, be true.
What, in the name of common-sense, had I to do with any better society than I had always lived in?
Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works.
I do detest all offices – all, at least, that are held on a political tenure.
What is there so ponderous in evil, that a thumb’s bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil, which were heaped into the other scale!
Yesterday I visited the British Museum; an exceedingly tiresome affair. It quite crushes a person to see so much at once; and I wandered from hall to hall with a weary and heavy heart. The present is burdened too much with the past.
The present is burdened too much with the past. We have not time, in our earthly existence, to appreciate what is warm with life, and immediately around us.
Happiness is like a butterfly...
Masculine observers, if the birth-mark did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness, without the semblance of a flaw.
The love of science to rival the love of woman, in its depth and absorbing energy.
Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race.
The traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.
Truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during our waking moments.
New England is quite as large a lump of earth as my heart can really take in.
It loves more readily than it hates.
Writing can come naturally to some. Still, when it comes to good writing, this is true: Easy reading is damn hard writing.
If the truth were to be known, everyone would be wearing a scarlet letter of one form or another.
The world surely has not another place like Oxford; it is a despair to see such a place and ever to leave it, for it would take a lifetime and more than one to comprehend and enjoy it satisfactorily.