[Ideas] are like shadows — substantial enough until we try to grasp them. - Samuel Butler

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.

Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch cold on over-exposure.

Happily common sense, though she is by nature the gentlest creature living, when she feels the knife at her throat, is apt to develop unexpected powers of resistance, and to send doctrinaires flying, even when they have bound her down and think they have her at their mercy.