Pure felicity is reserved for the heavenly life; it grows not in an earthly soil.

Truth is the root, but human sympathy is the flower of practical life.

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth - the true poet is very near the oracle.

The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged the chance; conquered the chance; and made chance the servitor.

The essence of justice is mercy.

It is not death to have the body called back to the earth, and dissolved into its kindred elements, and mouldered to dust, and, it may be, turn to daisies, in the grave. But it is death to have the soul paralyzed, its inner life quenched, its faculties dissipated; that is death.

Whatever may be our condition in life, it is better to lay hold of its advantages than to count its evils.