I have learned to prize the quiet, lightning deed, not the applauding thunder at its heels that men call fame.

I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.

There is a certain even-handed justice in Time; and for what he takes away he gives us something in return. He robs us of elasticity of limb and spirit, and in its place he brings tranquility and repose—the mild autumnal weather of the soul.

My garden, with its silence and pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.

If we were to live here always, with no other care than how to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, life would be a very sorry business. It is immeasurably heightened by the solemnity of death.

Style, after all, rather than thought, is the immortal thing in literature.

Fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid.