I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River, when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.
Each man reserves to himself alone the right of being tedious.
Black men built the railroads, not blue eyes.
People who wash much have a high mind about it, and talk down to those who wash little.
The men who come on the stage at one period are all found to be related to each other. Certain ideas are in the air.
Private, accidental, confidential conversation breeds thought. Clubs produce oftener words.
The art of conversation, or the qualification for a good companion, is a certain self-control, which now holds the subject, now lets it go, with a respect for the emergencies of the moment.
The secret of the world is the tie between person and event. Person makes event and event person.
Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function; living is the functionary.
No man gains credit for his cowardly courtesies.
Nature is a rag merchant, who works up every shred and ort and end into new creations.
By the irresistible maturing of the general mind, the Christian traditions have lost their hold.
Every stoic was a stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?
Instead of making Christianity a vehicle of truth, you make truth only a horse for Christianity.
It is curious that Christianity, which is idealism, is sturdily defended by the brokers, and steadily attacked by the idealists.
How beautiful to have the church always open, so that every tired wayfaring man may come in and be soothed by all that art can suggest of a better world when he is weary with this.
The idea of God ends in a paltry Methodist meeting-house.
No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews.
Cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.
What is the city in which we sit here, but an aggregate of incongruous materials, which have obeyed the will of some man?