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!

I'd like to grow very old as slowly as possible.

We encourage one another in mediocrity.

She unbent her mind afterwards - over a book.

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.

I could never hate anyone I knew.

Cultivate simplicity, Coleridge.