“A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

Consequences are unpitying.

I flutter all ways, and fly in none.

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.

Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name . … Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.

No man can be wise on an empty stomach.

Impatient people, according to Bacon, are like the bees, and kill themselves in stinging others.

Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.

Trouble’s made us kin.

Rome – the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.

Jews are not fit for Heaven, but on earth they are most useful.

I have nothing to tell except travellers’ stories, which are always tiresome, like the description of a play which was very exciting to those who saw it.

If you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it.

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff.