... if fiction does not show us a better life than reality, what is the good of it?

the fruit of life is experience, not happiness.

... trouble of all kinds is voluble, and has plenty of words, but happiness was never written down.

if a thing is to be done, there is no time like the hour that has not struck.

... though mathematics may teach a man how to build a bridge, it is what the Scotch Universities call the humanities, that teach him to be civil and sweet-tempered.

I have seen that every one forgives much in themselves that they find unpardonable in other people.

But the lover's power is the poet's power. He can make love from all the common strings with which this world is strung.