At no time are people so sedulously careful to keep their trifling appointments, attend to their ordinary occupations, and thus put a commonplace aspect on life, as when conscious of some secret that if suspected would make them look monstrous in the general eye.

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.

The love of posterity is the consequence of the necessity of death. If a man were sure of living forever here, he would not care about his offspring.

What we call real estate—the solid ground to build a house on—is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.

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.

Man is a wretch without woman; but woman is a monster—and thank Heaven, an almost impossible and hitherto imaginary monster—without man, as her acknowledged principal!

Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.

Language,—human language,—after all is but little better than the croak and cackle of fowls, and other utterances of brute nature,—sometimes not so adequate.

It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates.

A hero cannot be a hero unless in an heroic world.