Reserve is the truest expression of respect towards those who are its objects.

A great scholar, in the highest sense of the term, is not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination; bringing together from the four winds, like the Angel of the Resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life.

Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.

Many a man has risen to eminence under the powerful reaction of his mind in fierce counter-agency to the scorn of the unworthy, daily evoked by his personal defects, who with a handsome person would have sunk into the luxury of a careless life under the tranquillizing smiles of continual admiration.

Out of the ruined lodge and forgotten mansion, bowers that are trodden under foot, and pleasure-houses that are dust, the poet calls up a palingenesis.

It is one of the misfortunes in life that one must read thousands of books only to discover that one need not have read them.

The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted.