Time is, after all, the greatest of poets; and the sons of Memory stand a better chance of being the heirs of Fame.

Attention is the stuff that memory is made of, and memory is accumulated genius.

The wisest man could ask no more of fate Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, Safe from the many, honored by the few; Nothing to court in Church, or World, or State, But inwardly in secret to be great.

The story of any one man's real experience finds its startling parallel in that of every one of us.

Piety is indifferent whether she enters at the eye or at the ear. There is none of the senses at which she does not knock one day or other. The Puritans forgot this, and thrust Beauty out of the meeting-house and slammed the door in her face.

That cause is strong which has, not a multitude, but one strong man behind it.

I would hardly change the sorrowful words of the poets for their glad ones. Tears dampen the strings of the lyre, but they grow the tensor for it, and ring even the clearer and more ravishingly.