How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth make poetry for a mind that had no movements of awe and tenderness, no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant to the near?

With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader.

The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.

... one always believes one's own town to be more stupid than any other.

In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little.

Mysterious haunts of echoes old and far, The voice divine of human loyalty.

One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.