A library is that venerable place where men preserve the history of their experience, their tentative experiments, their discoveries, and their plans... in books may be found the recipes for daily living - the prescriptions for the mind and the heart.

I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world.

Do not trust your memory; it is a net full of holes; the most beautiful prizes slip through it.

The swimmer adrift on the open seas measures his strength, and strives with all his muscles to keep himself afloat. But what is he to do when there is no land on the horizon, and none beyond it?

In the beds which the piety of the public has prepared on every side, stricken men await the verdict of fate.

The man who has entered into a beautiful union is sure of at least one person to whom he can give the best that he possesses.

We can know nothing till after this grave debate. The soul must withdraw, for this is not its hour. Now the knife must divide the flesh, and lay the ravage bare, and do its work completely.