Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural.

Sweet April's tears, Dead on the hem of May.

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

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

A man does not plant a tree for himself; he plants it for posterity.

Thoughts must come naturally, like wild-flowers; they cannot be forced in a hot-bed, even although aided by the leaf-mould of your past.

The truly great rest in the knowledge of their own deserts, nor seek the conformation of the world.