Masculine observers, if the birth-mark did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness, without the semblance of a flaw.

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.

In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point.

Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one ... to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.

The world surely has not another place like Oxford; it is a despair to see such a place and ever to leave it, for it would take a lifetime and more than one to comprehend and enjoy it satisfactorily.

Happiness is like a butterfly.

Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens and wallflowers need ruin to make them grow.