All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

If I could put my hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful? The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it, the beauty forsakes all the near water. For the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at the same time.

Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

Our chief want in life, is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.

Bad times have a scientific value. [...] We learn geology the morning after the earthquake, on ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains, upheaved plains, and the dry bed of the sea.