It is unpleasant to miss even the most trifling thing to which we have been accustomed.

Time is a strange thing. It is a whimsical tyrant, which in every century has a different face for all that one says and does.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

Our hands we open of our own free will, and the good flies, which we can never recall.

The world is so great and rich, and life so full of variety, that you can never lack occasions for poems.

Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff for that purpose in it; and a man becomes renowned because he has the necessary stuff in him. Renown is not to be sought, and all pursuit of it is vain. A person may, indeed, by skillful conduct and various artificial means, make a sort of name for himself; but if the inner jewel is wanting, all is vanity, and will not last a day.