“What we read with pleasure we read again with pleasure.”

“You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don't labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers”

“The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life. In instructing, be brief in what you say in order that your readers may grasp it quickly and retain it faithfully. Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full. Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality.”

“Even as we speak, time speeds swiftly away.”

“Pulvis et umbra sumus. (We are but dust and shadow.)”

“As we speak, cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow.”

“It is impossible to enslave, mentally or socially, a bible-reading people. The principles of the bible are the groundwork of human freedom.”