We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

Immitation is suicide.

The magnanimous know very well that they who give time, or money, or shelter, to the stranger--so it be done for love, and not forostentation--do, as it were, put God under obligation to them, so perfect are the compensations of the universe.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

The world is so beautiful that I can hardly believe it exists.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.