Rome - the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.

Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead.

Don't judge a book by its cover

Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.

I have nothing to tell except travellers' stories, which are always tiresome, like the description of a play which was very exciting to those who saw it.

If we need a true conception of the popular character to guide our sympathies rightly, we need it equally to check our theories, and direct us in their application.

We reap what we sow, but nature has love over and above that justice, and gives us shadow and blossom and fruit, that spring from no planting of ours.