When they are gay, the waves echo their gaiety; but when they are sad, then every breaker, as it rolls, seems to bring additional sadness, and to speak to us of hopelessness and of the pettiness of all our joys.

I take it, sir, that you do not approve of our new society." "Approval, sir, in my opinion, demands the attainment of perfection. And in that sense, you rather overrate the charms of your society. I'faith, for one thing, it does seem monstrous ill-dressed for any society, even a new one.

Thus human beings judge of one another, superficially, casually, throwing contempt on one another, with but little reason, and no charity.

The weariest night, the longest day, sooner or later must perforce come to an end.

music is the most absorbing of all the arts. It absorbs the mind of the artist, whether creator or executant, to the exclusion of every other consideration outside his own immediate necessities or desires.

Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when it is crushed.

A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate. The hour, some little time before sunset, and the place, the West Barricade, at the very spot where, a decade later, a proud tyrant raised an undying monument to the nation's glory and his own vanity.