It is a characteristic of old age to find the progress of time accelerated. The less one accomplishes in a given time, the shorter does the retrospect appear.

Absolutely nothing is so important for a nation's culture as its language.

Possession, it is true, crowns exertion with rest; but it is only in the illusions of fancy that it has power to charm us.

If the mind loves solitude, it has thereby acquired a loftier character, and it becomes still more noble when the taste is indulged in.

Death is but a word to us. One's own experience alone can teach us the real meaning of the word. The sight of the dying does little. What one sees of them is merely what precedes death: dull unconsciousness is all we see. Whether this be so,--how and when the spirit wakes to life again,--this is what all wish to know, and what never can be known until it is experienced.

The most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue ....perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world has to show.

The finest fruit earth holds up to its Maker is a finished man.