A friend should be one in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and its sincerity.

Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet, . . . . Leave the chaff, and take the wheat.

The connection between conscious and unconscious poses particular problems in the dancer because the body is the soul of action.

If you want to know about a man you can find out an awful lot by looking at who he married.

The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.

There is an evening twilight of the heart, When its wild passion-waves are lulled to rest.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Thus repuls'd, our final hope Is flat despair.

Every man has two countries, his own and France.

And angling too, that solitary vice, What Izaak Walton sings or says: The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it.

The eagle suffers little birds to sing, And is not careful what they mean thereby, Knowing that with the shadow of his wings He can at pleasure stint their melody: Even so mayest thou the giddy men of Rome.

Man is not the creature of circumstances, Circumstances are the creatures of men.

The Divine Wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.

I can't help the look of accusation in your eyes

The tap'ring pyramid, the Egyptian's pride, And wonder of the world, whose spiky top Has wounded the thick cloud.

It is extraordinary how the house and the simplest possessions of someone who has been left become so quickly sordid. Even the stain on the coffee cup seems not coffee but the physical manifestation of one's inner stain, the fatal blot that from the beginning had marked one for ultimate aloneness.

Men always want to be a woman's first love. Women have a more subtle instinct; what they like to be is a man's last romance.

Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.

I have no regrets because I know I did my best -- all I could do.

The grave is still the best shelter against the storms of destiny.