Many of the finest and most interesting emotions perish forever, because too complex and fugitive for expression. Of all things relating to man, his feelings are perhaps the most evanescent, the greater part dying in the moment of their birth. But while emotions perish, thought blended in diction is immortal.

It is possible to indulge too great contempt for mere success, which is frequently attended with all the practical advantages of merit itself, and with several advantages that merit alone can never command.

Many of the finest and most interesting emotions perish forever, because too complex and fugitive for expression. Of all things relating to man, his feelings are perhaps the most evanescent, the greater part dying in the moment of their birth. But while emotions perish, thought blended in diction is immortal.

Man often acquires just so much knowledge as to discover his ignorance, and attains so much experience as to regret his follies, and then dies.

The fame which bids fair to live the longest resembles that which Horace attributes to Marcellus, whose progress he compares to the silent, imperceptible growth of a tree.

After upwards of two thousand years Epicurus has been exonerated from the reproach that the doctrines of his philosophy recommended the pleasures of sensuality and voluptuousness as the chief good. Calumny may rest on genius a considerable part of a world's duration; what then is the value of fame?

Great books, like large skulls, have often the least brains.