“Longfellow smiled. "A great part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, my dear Lowell, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.”

“ 'Pity without rigor would be cowardly egotism, mere sentimentality.' ”

“A man was leaning idly against an elm. ... The man, who towered over the poet even at his slanting angle, too old for a student and too worn for a faculty member, stared at him with the familiar, i...”

“...It is the one time Dante calls such explicit attention to the idea of contrapasso-a word for which we have no exact translation, no precise definition in English, because the word in itself is i...”

“'Pity without rigor would be cowardly egotism, mere sentimentality.'”

“If you claim to be a real friend then be real in your soul. If you claim to be fake then be an enemy instead.”

“I think that most people would rather face the light of a real enemy than the darkness of their imagined fears.”

“You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.”

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”