The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.

The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds of others.

To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous; or even if he did you would find fault with him as a pedant.

It is better to drink of deep grief than to taste shallow pleasures.

The insolence of the vulgar is in proportion to their ignorance. They treat everything with contempt which they do not understand.

Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?

Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.