Life protracted is protracted woe,
Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy,
And shuts up all the passages of joy. [ Johnson ]

Out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books, and the like, we do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time. [ Bacon ]

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences, or asides, hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Great men stand like solitary towers in the city of God, and secret passages running deep beneath external Nature give their thoughts intercourse with higher intelligences, which strengthens and consoles them, and of which the labourers on the surface do not even dream. [ Longfellow ]

Though nature is constantly beautiful, she does not exhibit her highest powers of beauty constantly; for then they would satiate us, and pall upon our senses. It is necessary to their appreciation that they should be rarely shown. Her finest touches are things which must be watched for; her most perfect passages of beauty are the most evanescent. [ Ruskin ]

Whatever we may say against such collections which present authors in a disjointed form, they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem, to have a direct reference to ourselves? Young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of the mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant quotations." [ Goethe ]