Our respect for the dead, when they are just dead, is something wonderful, and the way we show it more wonderful still. We show it with black feathers and black horses; we show it with black dresses and black heraldries; we show it with costly obelisks and sculptures of sorrow, which spoil half of our beautiful cathedrals. We show it with frightful gratings and vaults, and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the quiet grass; and last, and not least, we show it by permitting ourselves to tell any number of falsehoods we think amiable or credible in the epitaph.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.

Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.

We are only advancing in life, whose hearts are getting softer, our blood warmer, our brains quicker, and our spirits entering into living peace.

All men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped; they are taught by every person they meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest, is he who has been oftenest aided. Originality is the observing eye.

Hope- the recognition, by true foresight, of better things to be reached here after.