For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.

Where there is mystery, it is generally suspected there must also be evil.

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.

It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time.

I would rather have a nod from an American, than a snuff-box from an emperor.

Prolonged endurance tames the bold.

A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress.