I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.

I have made a very rude translation of the Seven against Thebes, and Pindar too I have looked at, and wish he was better worth translating. I believe even the best things are not equal to their fame. Perhaps it would be better to translate fame itself,--or is not that what the poets themselves do? However, I have not done with Pindar yet.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, andflatter and study effect only more finely than the rest.

I was determined to know beans.

Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.