Live well, learn plenty, laugh often, love much.

The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.

I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. ... All that interests in any character [is this]: has he (or she) the money to marry with? ... Suicide is more respectable.

We infer the spirit of the nation in great measure from the language, which is a sort of monument, to which each forcible individual in a course of many hundred years has contributed a stone.

Cupid is a casuist, a mystic, and a cabalist,-- Can your lurking thought surprise, And interpret your device, . . . . All things wait for and divine him,-- How shall I dare to malign him?

Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast.

The powers of the Soul are commensurate with its needs.