“What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?”

“The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce.”

“For nothing burns with such amazing speed, As the dry sticks of a religious creed.”

“The mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts.”

“Memory is a net: one that finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.”

“It now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears.”

“Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.”

“In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.”