... the progress of the language has caused us to lose many old treasures. It is thus with all progress, and one must make the best of it.

It is extraordinary how music sends one back into memories of the past.

nature has not changed. The night is still unsullied, the stars still twinkle, and the wild thyme smells as sweetly now as it did then ... We may be afflicted and unhappy, but no one can take from us the sweet delight which is nature's gift to those who love her and her poetry.

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

Life is a succession of afflictions for the heart.

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self when one does not lack wit and is familiar with all the niceties of language. Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer for everything, who has always foreseen everything, and who assumes a thousand forms in order to be right. The most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write

You see what stupid folk my publishers are; but they are all alike.