I am no Platonist, I am nothing at all; but I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist, Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-two villainous sects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and hatred of each other.

Marriage, from love, like vinegar from wine-- A sad, sour sober beverage--by time Is sharpened from its high celestial flavor Down to a very homely household savor.

Self praise is no praise at all.

Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.

The keenest pangs the wretched find Are rapture to the dreary void, The leafless desert of the mind, The waste of feelings unemployed.

This is to be mortal, And seek the things beyond mortality.

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand; I saw from out the wave of her structure's rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble pines, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.