"Literature is the Thought of thinking Souls."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Happy the people whose annals are blank in history-books."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Clever men are good, but they are not the best."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"His religion at best is an anxious wish,--like that of Rabelais, a great Perhaps."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we can find nowhere in his works, that "ridicule is the test of truth.""

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Silence is deep as Eternity, speech is shallow as Time."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"To the very last, he [Napoleon] had a kind of idea; that, namely, of la carrière ouverte aux talents,--the tools to him that can handle them."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"How does the poet speak to men with power, but by being still more a man than they?"

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also it may be said, there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"We are firm believers in the maxim that for all right judgment of any man or thing it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Blessed is the healthy nature; it is the coherent, sweetly co-operative, not incoherent, self-distracting, self-destructive one!"

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden,--"Speech is silvern, Silence is golden;" or, as I might rather express it, Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Literary men are . . . a perpetual priesthood."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"It can be said of him, when he departed he took a Man's life with him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of Time."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time: the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"We must repeat the often repeated saying, that it is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion, or with any other feeling than regret and hope and brotherly commiseration."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"The eye of the intellect "sees in all objects what it brought with it the means of seeing.""

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"One life,--a little gleam of time between two Eternities."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"A wise man poor Is like a sacred book that 's never read,-- To himself he lives, and to all else seems dead. This age thinks better of a gilded fool Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom's school."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"This principle is old, but true as fate,-- Kings may love treason, but the traitor hate."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"And though mine arm should conquer twenty worlds, There 's a lean fellow beats all conquerors."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"To add to golden numbers golden numbers."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Honest labour bears a lovely face."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"We are ne'er like angels till our passion dies."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"I was ne'er so thrummed since I was a gentleman."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"The best of men That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer; A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, The first true gentleman that ever breathed."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Oh, it 's a snug little island! A right little, tight little island."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Property has its duties as well as its rights."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt? Sweet Alice, whose hair was so brown; Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile, And trembl'd with fear at your frown!"

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Thus Raleigh, thus immortal Sidney shone (Illustrious names!) in great Eliza's days."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"They that marry ancient people, merely in expectation to bury them, hang themselves in hope that one will come and cut the halter."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Their heads sometimes so little that there is no room for wit; sometimes so long that there is no wit for so much room."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"One that will not plead that cause wherein his tongue must be confuted by his conscience."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"But our captain counts the image of God--nevertheless his image--cut in ebony as if done in ivory, and in the blackest Moors he sees the representation of the King of Heaven."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Often the cockloft is empty in those whom Nature hath built many stories high."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"The lion is not so fierce as painted."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"He was one of a lean body and visage, as if his eager soul, biting for anger at the clog of his body, desired to fret a passage through it."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"She commandeth her husband, in any equal matter, by constant obeying him."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"The Pyramids themselves, doting with age, have forgotten the names of their founders."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of her sickness-broken body."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"A little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery; but depth in that study brings him about again to our religion."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"That man may last, but never lives, Who much receives, but nothing gives; Whom none can love, whom none can thank,-- Creation's blot, creation's blank."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"A fav'rite has no friend!"

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"What female heart can gold despise? What cat 's averse to fish?"

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain

"Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed, Less pleasing when possest; The tear forgot as soon as shed, The sunshine of the breast."

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 9th ed. (Little, Brown, 1905), public domain