People who are very vain are usually equally susceptible; and they who feel one thing acutely, will so feel another.

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.

Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is active; it is concentrated strength.

A man of genius is inexhaustible only in proportion as he is always renourishing his genius.

Each man forms his duty according to his predominant characteristic; the stern require an avenging judge; the gentle, a forgiving father. Just so the pygmies declared that Jove himself was a pygmy.

The learned compute that seven hundred and seven millions of millions of vibrations have to penetrate the eye before the eye can distinguish the tints of a violet.

What is human is immortal!