Cannot we let [children] be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make another you. One's enough.

Between cultivated minds the first interview is the best.

A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

Tragedy is in the eye of the observer, and not in the heart of the sufferer.

There will always be in society certain persons who are mercuries of its approbation, and whose glance will at any time determinefor the curious their standing in the world. These are the chamberlains of the lesser gods. Accept their coldness as an omen of grace with the loftier deities, and allow them all their privilege.

Marriage is the perfection which love aimed at, ignorant of what it sought.