A library is but the soul's burial-ground. It is the land of shadows.

Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.

Sin makes its own hell, and goodness its own heaven.

Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated: by the other, virtue is kept alive, cherished, and confirmed.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that History has to teach.

Man always travels along precipices. His truest obligation is to keep his balance.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

If the Christian penitent dares to ask that his many departures from the Christian norm, his impatience, gloom, self-occupation, unloving prejudices, reckless tongue, feverish desires, with all the damage they have caused to Christ's Body, be set aside, because -- because, in spite of all, he longs for God and Eternal Life: then he must set aside and forgive all that the impatience, selfishness, bitter and foolish speech, and sudden yieldings to base impulse by others have caused him to endure. Hardness is the one impossible thing. Harshness to others in those who ask and need the mercy of God sets up a conflict at the very heart of personality and shuts the door upon grace.

Commemoration of Samuel Seabury, First Anglican Bishop in North America, 1796 [Dr. Johnson to a Quaker:] Oh, let us not be found, when our Master calls us, ripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit of contention from our souls and tongues.

Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks.

No man's pie is freed From his ambitious finger. -King Henry VIII. Act i. Sc. 1.

My heart is feminine, nor can forget-- To all, except one image, madly blind; So shakes the needle, and so stands the pole, As vibrates my fond heart to my fix'd soul.

You lived too long, we have supped full with heroes, they waste their deaths on us.

In my mind's eye, Horatio.

Governing sense, mind and intellect, intent on liberation, free from desire, fear and anger, the sage is forever free.

To decide to be at the level of choice, is to take responsibility for your life and to be in control of your life.

If he that in the field is slain Be in the bed of honour lain, He that is beaten may be said To lie in Honour's truckle-bed.

Fashion, which elevates the bad to the level of the good, subsqequently turns its back on bad and good alike. - "Introduction to Naked Masks by Luigi Pirandello", 1952.

Discouragement is the opposite of courage.

The Boy and the Filberts A boy put his hand into a pitcher full of filberts. He grasped as many as he could possibly hold, but when he tried to pull out his hand, he was prevented from doing so by the neck of the pitcher. Unwilling to lose his filberts, and yet unable to withdraw his hand, he burst into tears and bitterly lamented his disappointment. A bystander said to him, Be satisfied with half the quantity, and you will readily draw out your hand. Do not attempt too much at once.