Civilization is perhaps approaching one of those long winters that overtake it from time to time. Romantic Christendom - picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode - may be coming to an end. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for despair.

Every nation thinks its own madness normal and requisite; more passion and more fancy it calls folly, less it calls imbecility.

Nothing you can lose by dying is half as precious as the readiness to die, which is man's charter of nobility.

All the doctrines that have flourished in the world about immortality have hardly affected man's natural sentiment in the face of death.

A friend's only gift is himself.

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

Half our standards come from our first masters, and the other half from our first loves.