Selfish— a judgment readily passed by those who have never tested their own power of sacrifice.

It is a wonderful subduer-this need of love, this hunger of the heart.

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

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.

He who rules must fully humor as much as he commands.

To an old memory like mine the present days are but as a little water poured on the deep.

Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations. Lydgate's discontent was much harder to bear; it was the sense that there was a grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such fears.