Life teaches much, but to all thinking persons it brings ever closer the will of God - not because their faculties decline, but on the contrary, because they increase.

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.

[On Italian:] One may almost call it a language that talks of itself, and always seems more witty than its speakers.

The memories which come to us through music are not accompanied by any regrets; for a moment music gives us back the pleasures it retraces, and we feel them again rather than recollect them.

Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.

The most beautiful landscapes in the world, if they evoke no memory, if they bear no trace of a remarkable event, are uninteresting compared to historic landscapes.

How much past there is in a life, however brief it be.