Some of the sweetest hours in life, in retrospect will be found to have been spent with books.

A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed in what is set above him. He learns that his being is without bound; that to the good, to the perfect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and weakness.

Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present.

There is nothing we value and hunt and cultivate and strive to draw to us, but in some hour we turn and rend it.

Each truth that a writer acquires is a lantern, which he turns full on what facts and thoughts lay already in his mind, and behold, all the mats and rubbish which had littered his garret become precious. Every trivial fact in his private biography becomes an illustration of this new principle, revisits the day, and delights all men by its piquancy and new charm.

The betrothed and accepted lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden by her acceptance. She was heaven while he pursued her, but she cannot be heaven if she stoops to one such as he!

We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates.