All government, all exercise of power, no matter in what form, which is not based in love and directed by knowledge, is a tyranny.

A good taste in art feels the presence or the absence of merit; a just taste discriminates the degree--the poco piu and the poco meno. A good taste rejects faults; a just taste selects excellences. A good taste is often unconscious; a just taste is always conscious. A good taste may be lowered or spoilt; a just taste can only go on refining more and more.

Blessed is the memory of those who have kept themselves unspotted from the world. Yet more blessed and more dear the memory of those who have kept themselves unspotted in the world.

Satan--the impersonation of that mixture of the bestial, the malignant, the impious, and the hopeless, which constitute the fiend--the enemy of all that is human and divine.

As the presence of those we love is as a double life, so absence, in its anxious longing and sense of vacancy, is as a foretaste of death.

When we talk of leaving our childhood behind us, we might as well say that the river flowing onward to the sea had left the fountain behind.

I have great admiration for power, a great terror of weakness, especially in my own sex, yet feel that my love is for those who overcome the mental and moral suffering and temptation through excess of tenderness rather than through excess of strength.