Consider what you have in the smallest well-chosen library-a company of the wisest and wittiest men which can be plucked out of all civilized countries in a thousand years. The men themselves were then hidden and inaccessible. They were solitary, impatient of interruption, and fenced by etiquette. But now they are immortal, and the thought they did not reveal, even to their bosom friends, is here written out in transparent words of light to us, who are strangers of another age.

If I am the devil's child, I will live then, by the devil.

Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.

There are books... which rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences.

Our poets are men of talents who sing, and not the children of music.

In imitation is a bit suicide.

For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.