The wise man, the true friend, the finished character, we seek everywhere, and only find in fragments.

I wish that friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground, before it vaults overthe moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub.

All history is the decline of war, though the slow decline. All that society has yet gained is mitigation; the doctrine of the right of war still remains.

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive one.

Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

There are people who have an appetite for grief; pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain. They have mithridatic stomachs which must be fed on poisoned bread, natures so doomed that no prosperity can sooth their ragged and dishevelled desolation.

All men are poets at heart. They serve nature for bread, but her loveliness overcomes them sometimes.