“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.”

“Believe that when I am at once a man's friend I am always so-nor is it so very hard to bring me to it. And though a man may enjoy himself in being my enemy, he cannot make me HIS for longer than I ...”

“ '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...”

“Let us dream of tomorrow where we can truly love from the soul, and know love as the ultimate truth at the heart of all creation.”

“Pride be damned, we do what must be done to survive.”

“I'd love to do comedy. And I think I have a pretty good sense of comic thing, so I'd really like to try that.”