True love survives all shocks: an affection originally produced by admiration for unusual beauty may not only survive the loss of that beauty, but may become more intense if the beauty has changed into ugliness through causes that bind the lovers together in tender associations.

We must rejoice when love is great, and pardon its excess, for love is the staff of life, and life without love is life in vain.

Some people would be discontented in Paradise, others ... are cheerful in a graveyard.

Life asks for a preparation as complete as we can afford; the great contest should be fought with spirit but with good temper always; we should never think the game lost while it is still going; and finally we should have the satisfaction of quitting the field able to say: I did my best.

Pessimism is carefully cultivated in some intellectual circles, as if it were a precious plant that the human race could not afford to lose.

So this is happiness, that journeyman.

Wit is something more than a gymnastic trick of the intellect; true wit implies a beam of thought into the essence of a question, a flash that lights up a situation. Wit suggests the delicate but delightful play of a rapier in the hands of a master.