When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash.

It is belief in the Bible, the fruits of deep meditation, which has served me as the guide of my moral and literary life. I have found capital safely invested and richly productive of interest, although I have sometimes made but a bad use of it.

The history of mankind is his character.

I will say with Lorenzo de Medici that those who do not hope for another life are always dead to this one.

All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.

To a valet no man is a hero.

Love can do much, but duty more.