We want our friend as a man of talent, less because he has talent than because he is our friend.

God often visits us, but most of the time we are not at home.

When orators and auditors have the same prejudices, those prejudices run a great risk of being made to stand for incontestable truths.

Solitude vivifies, isolation kills.

Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite impressions.

There is a slowness in affairs which ripens them, and a slowness which rots them.

Nothing vivifies, and nothing kills, like the emotions.

I look at what I have not and think myself unhappy; others look at what I have and think me happy.

Conscientious men are, almost everywhere, less encouraged than tolerated.

There are people who laugh to show their fine teeth; and there are those who cry to show their good hearts.

For her, their romantic interlude atop the staircase had been a glorious, magical, enlightening introduction to pleasure. For him, it had merely been Friday evening.

Every single one of us can do something, however small, to make a difference.

History is not reassuring on the subject of the longevity of seemingly lasting great nations, is it?

I rather like a certain clumsiness in a work of art.

What's behind you doesn't matter.

Ah! If man would but see that hope is from within and not from without - that he himself must work out his own salvation.

If you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert and a drug addict, all it means is that you've read his autobiography.

There is no expert on what happiness is but many on what it might have been.

I thought if I lost the band, I was dead. If I didn't stick with the Who, I would be a sheet metal worker for the rest of my life.

Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.