Friendship is a sheltering tree.

The soul exceeds its circumstances.

The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.

In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.

When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and things, he is mad.

He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.

Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.

This world has angels all too few, and heaven is overflowing.

No man does anything from a single motive.

I love being superior to myself better than [to] my equals.

Doing evil to avoid evil cannot be good.

Experience informs us that the first defence of weak minds is to recriminate.

Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and all truth is a species of revelation

The rules of prudence, like the laws of the stone tables, are for the most part prohibitive. "Thou shalt not" is their characteristic formula.

Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.

He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.

To believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same things in different periods of growth.

Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.

Our own heart, and not other men's opinion, forms our true honor.