It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.

Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age. In writing Dialogues in Limbo, The Last Puritan, and now all these descriptions of the friends of my youth and the young friends of my middle age, I have drunk the pleasure of life more pure, more joyful than it ever was when mingled with all the hidden anxieties and little annoyances of actual living. Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.

Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.

A soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world.

It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and the grace of it elude the stranger.

Truth is a jewel which should not be painted over; but it may be set to advantage and shown in a good light.

The works of nature first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke.