Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert thou not born in my father's dwelling?

I have sat through an Italian opera, til, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded street, to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention!

A sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature.

Shall I ask the brave soldier who fights by my side In the cause of mankind, if our creeds agree?

Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that being nothing art everything? When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity - then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what half Januses are we, that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty future is as nothing, being everything! the past is everything, being nothing!

Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below?

In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from the binding.