Pulvis et umbra sumus. It's a line from Horace. 'We are dust and shadows'. Appropriate, don't you think?" Will said. "It's not a long life, killing demons; one tends to die young, and then they burn your body - dust to dust, in the literal sense. And then we vanish into the shadows of history, nary a mark on the page of a mundane book to remind the world that once we existed at all.
Nature is the most thrifty thing in the world; she never wastes anything; she undergoes change, but there is no annihilation, the essence remains - matter is eternal.
It is not necessary for all men to be great in action. The greatest and sublimest power is simple patience.
If you had the seeds of pestilence in your body you would not have a more active contagion that you have in your tempers, tastes, and principles. Simply to be in this world, whatever you are, is to exert an influence, compared with which mere language and persuasion are feeble.
To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.
Character is what God and the angels know of us; reputation is what men and women think of us.
Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity.
If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it.
Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.