A man is already of consequence in the world when it is known that we can implicitly rely upon him. Often I have known a man to be preferred in stations of honor and profit because he had this reputation: When he said he knew a thing, he knew it, and when he said he would do a thing, he did it.

Days are like years in the love of the young, when no bar, no obstacle, is between their hearts,--when the sun shines, and the course runs smooth--when their love is prosperous and confessed.

The Italians have voices like peacocks - German gives me a cold in the head - and Russian is nothing but sneezing

We love the beautiful and serene, but we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible and dark.

People praise us behind our backs, but we hear them not; few before our faces, and who is not suspicious of the truth of such praise?

Genius in the poet, like the nomad of Arabia, ever a wanderer, still ever makes a home where the well or the palm-tree invites it to pitch the tent. Perpetually passing out of himself and his own positive circumstantial condition of being into other hearts and into other conditions, the poet obtains his knowledge of human life by transporting his own life into the lives of others.

The affections are immortal! They are the sympathies which unite the ceaseless generations.