Every fancy that we would substitute for a reality is, if we saw aright, and saw the whole, not only false, but every way less beautiful and excellent than that which we sacrifice to it.

Language. By this we build pyramids, fight battles, ordain and administer laws, shape and teach religion, and knit man to man, cultivate each other, and ourselves.

Color, in the outward world, answers to feeling in man shape, to thought motion, to will. The dawn of day is the nearest outward likeness of an act of creation and it is, therefore, also the closest type in nature for that in us which most approaches to creation--the realization of an idea by an act of the will.

Knowledge, or more expressively truth,--for knowledge is truth received into our intelligence,--truth is an ideal whole.

Compliments are only lies in court clothes.

Colors answer feeling in man shapes answer thought and motion answers will.

Faith in a better than that which appears is no less required by art than by religion.

Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness.

One dupe is as impossible as one twin.

I could honor Carmen Electra. I think she's beautiful.

Speech is as a pump, by which we raise and pour out the water from the great lake of Thought,--whither it flows back again.

There is no lie that a man will not believe and there is no man who does not believe many lies and there is no man who believes only lies.

Man is a substance clad in shadows.

Repentance clothes in grass and flowers the grave in which the past is laid.