Absurdities are great or small in proportion to custom or insuetude.

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

A good cook is the peculiar gift of the gods. He must be a perfect creature from the brain to the palate, from the palate to the finger's end.

I strove with none; for none was worth my strife.

Fancy is imagination in her youth and adolescence. Fancy is always excursive; imagination, not seldom, is sedate.

Something of the severe hath always been appertaining to order and to grace; and the beauty that is not too liberal is sought the most ardently, and loved the longest.

Life and death appear more certainly ours than whatsoever else; and yet hardly can that be called ours, which comes without our knowledge, and goes without it.