The rain is playing its soft pleasant tune fitfully on the skylight, and the shade of the fast-flying clouds across my book passed with delicate change.

The smallest pebble in the well of truth has its peculiar meaning, and will stand when man's best monuments have passed away.

Pitch a lucky man into the Nile, says the Arabian proverb, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth!

Of dead kingdoms I recall the soul, sitting amid their ruins

The Italians say that a beautiful woman by her smiles draws tears from our purse.

There is no divining-rod whose dip shall tell us at twenty what we shall most relish at thirty.

It is godlike to unloose the spirit, and forget yourself in thought.