Whereas, to borrow an illustration from mathematics, life was formerly an equation of, say, 100 unknown quantities, it is now one of 99 only, inasmuch as memory and heredity have been shown to be one and the same thing.

History is a bucket of ashes.

We all love best not those who offend us least, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

They say the test of [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?" And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot.

The foundations which we would dig about and find are within us, like the kingdom of heaven, rather than without.

If a man knows not life which he hath seen, how shall he know death, which he hath not seen?

To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead.