To death we owe our life; the passing of one generation opens a way for another.

There are some weaknesses that are peculiar and distinctive to generous characters, as freckles are to a fair skin.

To quote copiously and well, requires taste, judgment, and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound.

All men are alike in their lower natures; it is in their higher characters that they differ.

A genuine passion is like a mountain stream; it admits of no impediment; it cannot go backward; it must go forward.

How like a railway tunnel is the poor man's life, with the light of childhood at one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life at the other extremity!

There is a German proverb which says that Take-it-Easy and Live-Long are brothers.