He who is lord of himself, and exists upon his own resources, is a noble but a rare being.
The glory dies not, and the grief is past.
I have observed that vulgar readers almost always lose their veneration for the writings of the genius with whom they have had personal intercourse.
There is this value in books, that they enable us to converse with the dead. There is something in this beyond the mere intrinsic worth of what they have left us.