The bold may not live long, but the timid never live at all.

I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.

But we are so fond of life that we have no leisure to entertain the terror of death. It is a honeymoon with us all through, and none of the longest. Small blame to us if we give our whole hearts to this glowing bride of ours, to the appetities, to honour, to the hungry curiosity of the mind, to the pleasure of the eyes in nature, and the pride of our own nimble bodies.

Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle, if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living.

Talk is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money, it is all profit, it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health.

No human being ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes me suspect that we hear too much of it in literature.

Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly.