This ennui, for which we Saxons had no name,--this word of France, has got a terrific significance. It shortens life, and bereaves the day of its light.

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

There is a certain wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest men with the lowest, and which our ordinary education oftenlabors to silence and obstruct.

I am old, yet I look at wise men and see that I am very young. I look over those stars yonder, and into the myriads of the aspirant and ordered souls, and see I am a stranger and a youth and have yet my spurs to win. Too ridiculous are these airs of age.

Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet.

Pride ruined the angels.