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

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.

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

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.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

It’s never too late to be who you were meant to be.

The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots.

Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day.

When I find him to be envious, carping, spiteful, hating the successes of others, and complaining that the world has never done enough for him, I am apt to doubt whether his humility before God will atone for his want of manliness.

Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.

And panoply is an apt term here, because it is the ancient Greek word for ‘all weapons.

Still, it’s an apt metaphor for our profession. But there’s another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides family.

Youth is ever apt to judge in haste, and lose the medium in the wild extreme.