It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man's death hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred too.

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

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.

We are rather apt to consider an act wrong because it is unpleasant to us.

A common fallacy: to imagine a measure will be easy because we have private motives for desiring it.

Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.

Opinions: men's thoughts about great subjects. Taste: their thoughts about small ones: dress, behavior, amusements, ornaments.