We fight to keep something alive rather than in the expectation that anything will triumph.

We are not here to triumph by fighting, by strata gem, or by resistance, not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast and have conquered. We have only to conquer now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.

Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of self.

Birth, and copulation, and death; that's all the facts when you come to brass tacks.

The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man

Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labor of an author composing his work is critical labor; the labor of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing. This frightful toil is as much critical as creative.

That is the worst moment, when you feel you have lost / The desires for all that was most desirable, / Before you are contented with what you can desire; / Before you know what is left to be desired; / And you go on wishing that you could desire / What desire has left behind.