The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes.

I do not want an echo of myself from my children. I do not want to hear from them merely the reverberation of my own voice.

The mind's pleasures are made to calm the tempests of the heart.

Of all human sentiments, enthusiasm creates the most happiness; it is the only sentiment in fact which gives real happiness, the only sentiment which can help us to bear our human destiny in any situation in which we may find ourselves.

in Italy, almost at every step, history and poetry add to the graces of nature, sweeten the memory of the past, and seem to preserve it in eternal youth.

Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.

Tombs decked by the arts can scarcely represent death as a formidable enemy; we do not, indeed, like the ancients, carve sports and dances in the sarcophagus, but thought is diverted from the bier by works that tell of immortality, even from the altar of death.