No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

We cannot reform our forefathers.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

Scepticismcan never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill.

Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same incongruous manner.

We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves

Those old stories of visions and dreams guiding men have their truth; we are saved by making the future present to ourselves.