There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke.
A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.
It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.
There are hardly five critics in America; and several of them are asleep.
Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?
There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.
Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow.
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister.
To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.
The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind; but not the march of Love.
There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
There is something wrong about the man who wants help. There is somewhere a deep defect, a want, in brief, a need, a crying need, somewhere about that man.
There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.
There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities.
Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
