It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but not impossible that it may respect or sympathize; so a man would rather leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face.

I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.

Courage, the footstool of the Virtues, upon which they stand.

Every child can remember laying his head in the grass, staring into the infinitesimal forest and seeing it grow populous with fairy armies.

It is one of the worst things of sentiment that the voice grows to be more important than the words, and the speaker than that what is spoken.

Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.

And the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all.