What is companionship where nothing that improves the intellect is communicated, and where the larger heart contracts itself to the model and dimension of the smaller?

Experience is our only teacher both in war and peace.

As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious.

What is reading but silent conversation?

The present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come.

There is a gravity which is not austere nor captious, which belongs not to melancholy nor dwells in contraction of heart: but arises from tenderness and hangs upon reflection.

Belief in a future life is the appetite of reason.