It is greatest to believe and to hope well of the world, because he who does so, quits the world of experience, and makes the world he lives in.

When believers and unbelievers live in the same manner - I distrust the religion.

There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said.

Meek young men grow up in libraries.

We pray to be conventional. But the wary Heaven takes care you shall not be, if there is anything good in you. Dante was very badcompany, and was never invited to dinner.

Wherever a man commits a crime, God finds a witness. Every secret crime has its reporter.

Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort.