“Illusion is brief, but repentance is long.”

Measure not by the scale of perfection the meager product of reality.

He cannot complain of a hard sentence, who is made master of his own fate.

I speak with the Eternal through the instrument of nature, through the world’s history: I read the soul of the artist in his Apollo.

Time flies on restless pinions – constant never.

To one, science is an exalted goddess; to another it is a cow which provides him with butter.

When the gods were more manlike, Men were more godlike.

To be man’s tender mate was woman born, and in obeying nature she best serves the purposes of heaven.

We can never replace a friend. When a man is fortunate enough to have several, he finds they are all different. No one has a double in friendship.

Against stupidity, God Himself fights in vain.

There is room in the smallest cottage for a happy loving pair.

Honesty prospers in every condition of life.

If you have never seen beauty in a moment of suffering, you have never seen beauty at all. If you have never seen joy in a beautiful face, you have never seen joy at all.

Peace is rarely denied to the peaceful.

The happy man does not notice the flight of time.

The Moor has done his work, the Moor may go.

Strange customs do not thrive in foreign soil.

Sorrow is brief but joy is endless.

If matter mute and inanimate, though changed by the forces of Nature into a multitude of forms, can never die, will the spirit of man suffer annihilation when it has paid a brief visit, like a royal guest, to this tenement of clay?

Certainly any president – Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative – should keep an open mind until they get the briefing.

This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.

For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent.

Mathematicians come to the solution of a problem by the simple arrangement of the data, and reducing the reasoning to such simple operations, to judgments so brief, that they never lose sight of the evidence that serves as their guide.

Everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy kind of delight.

The Irishman sustains himself during brief periods of joy by the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner.