Could we know by what strange circumstances a man's genius became prepared for practical success, we should discover that the most serviceable items in his education were never entered in the bills which his father paid for.

Love is the business of the idle, but the idleness of the busy.

A man who cannot win fame in big own age will have a very small chance of winning it from posterity. True, there are some half-dozen exceptions to this truth among millions of myriads that attest it; but what man of common sense would invest any large amount of hope in so unpromising a lottery?

He who writes prose builds his temple to Fame in rubble; he who writes verses builds it in granite.

Tell me, sweet eyes, from what divinest star did ye drink in your liquid melancholy?

If you are in doubt whether to write a letter or not, don't. And the advice applies to many doubts in life besides that of letter writing.

Only by the candle, held in the skeleton hand of Poverty, can man read his own dark heart.