Grief alone can teach us what is man.

When a man is not amused, he feels an involuntary contempt for those who are.

The grave is, I suspect, the sole commonwealth which attains that dead flat of social equality that life in its every principle so heartily abhors.

Writers are the main landmarks of the past.

There is a world of science necessary in choosing books. I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about.

Castles in the air cost a vast deal to keep up.

The prudent person may direct a state, but it is the enthusiast who regenerates or ruins it