A scholar is a man with his inconvenience, that, when you ask him his opinion of any matter, he must go home and look up his manuscripts to know.

We ask for long life, but 'tis deep life, or noble moments that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.

Happy will that house be in which the relations are formed from character; after the highest, and not after the lowest order; the house in which character marries, and not confusion and a miscellany of unavowable motives.

Taking to pieces is the trade of those who cannot construct.

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.

Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend towhat addresses the senses.

All loss, all pain, is particular; the universe remains to the heart unhurt.