Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey.

The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.

An easy-going husband is the one indispensable comfort of life.

Emulation is active virtue; envy is brooding malice.

Scandals are like dandelion seeds--they are arrow-headed, and stick where they fall, and bring forth and multiply fourfold.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.

Could we see when and where we are to meet again, we would be more tender when we bid our friends goodbye.

Music is not a science any more than poetry is. It is a sublime instinct, like genius of all kinds.

I do not wish to be a coward like the father of mankind and throw the blame upon a woman.

Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.

Grateful moments, blessed time.

The United States was a big country where everybody wore funny t-shirts and ate too much.

Nothing is so exhausting as indecision and nothing is so futile.

I'm a competitive person but I have never understood people's competitiveness at the expense of their colleagues.

If you want something to last forever, you treat it differently.

There is no greater bugbear than a strong willed relative in the circle of his own connections.

I don't really believe in writer's block or anything like that. If I'm not feeling words, I may pick up an instrument and play with sounds or delve into different types of creativity and expression.