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!

There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet.

This is the magnanimity of authorship, when a writer having a topic presented to him, fruitful of beauties for common minds, waives his privilege, and trusts to the judicious few for understanding the reason of his abstinence.

The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility.

Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal.

Books think for me. I can read anything which I call a book.

My theory is to enjoy life, but my practice is against it.