Life is made up of marble and mud. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one — none, certainly, of anything like a similar importance — to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!