Neither love nor ambition, as it has often been shown, can brook a division of its empire in the heart.

Whether one talks well depends very much upon whom he has to talk to.

The nearest approximation to an understanding of life is to feel it--to realize it to the full--to be a profound and inscrutable mystery.

It is safer to quote what is written than what is spoken. What a man writes it is fair to presume he believes as a matter of general conviction, but it is not so with what he utters in the freedom of conversation. In that he may only express the feeling of the moment, and not his settled judgment, or matured opinion.

Successful love takes a load off our hearts, and puts it upon our shoulders.

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

Great warriors, like great earthquakes, are principally remembered for the mischief they have done.