Serendipity... You will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called 'The Three Princes of Serendip': as their Highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.

One's mind suffers only when one is young and while one is ignorant of the world. When one has lived for some time, one learns that the young think too little and the old too much, and one grows careless about both.

Letters to absence can a voice impart, And lend a tongue when distance gags the heart.

We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second.

Oh, we are ridiculous animals; and if the angels have any fun in them, how we must divert them!

Shakespeare had no tutors but nature and genius. He caught his faults from the bad taste of his contemporaries. In an age still less civilized Shakespeare might have been wilder, but would not have been vulgar.

[The] taste [of the French] is too timid to be true taste--or is but half taste.