Florence - the city of tranquillity made manifest.

Journeys end in lovers' meeting.' ... But the real journey - the journey of adventure itself - is frequently another matter: often gray, often loverless, often demanding from the secret soul of the adventurer spirit and inspiration, lest the blood turn cold in sick dismay, and the brain cloud under its weight of nostalgia.

It is sacrilege to attempt analysis of birth or love or death. Death and birth, the mysteries! Love, the revelation!

The saddest human experience is to view alone the scenes one has viewed through other eyes - to walk solitary where one has walked in company - to have its particular barbed shaft aimed at one from every stick and stone that mark familiar ways.

by the mercy of God all the ideas of youth are reversible!

Failure may be cruel, but success is crueller still. The gods are usurers, you know; they lend to mortals, but they exact a desperate interest.

Of all the ills that circumstance forces upon man, separation from a beloved object is, perhaps, the most salutary. Separation is the crucible wherein love undergoes the test absolute; in the fire of loss, grief softens to indifference or hardens to enduring need.