“Earnestness is the salt of eloquence.”

“Kings are for nations in their swaddling-clothes: France has attained her majority.”

“In the vast cosmical changes, the universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, ... sowing an animalcule here, crumbling a star there, oscillating and ... entangling, from the highest to the lowest, all activities in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism, hanging the flight of an insect upon the movement of the earth... Enormous gearing, whose first motor is the gnat, and whose last wheel is the zodiac.”

“The poetic element lying hidden in most women is the source of their magnetic attraction.”

“Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.”

“In winter's tedious nights sit by the fire With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales Of woeful ages, long ago betid”

“This act is an ancient tale new told;And, in the last repeating, troublesome,Being urged at a time unseasonable.”

“For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings.”