A Happy Childhood Is The Pledge Of

The Fable Runs That The Gods Mix Our Pains And Pleasure In One Cup, And Thus Mingle For Us The Adulterate Immortality Which We Alone Are Permitted Here To Enjoy. Voluptuous Raptures, Could We Prolong These At Pleasure, Would Dissipate And Dissolve Us. A Sip Is The Most That Mortals Are Permitted From Any Goblet Of Delight.

The Books That Charmed Us In Youth Recall The Delight Ever Afterwards; We Are Hardly Persuaded There Are Any Like Them, Any Deserving Our Equal Affections.

I Find My Past In My Present, And From These Forecast My Future.

One Must Be Rich In Thought And Character To Owe Nothing To Books.

Science Has Grown Frightfully Audacious In These Days -- Swift-footed, Ponderous, Careering Over Her Iron Ways With Unslacking Pace. This Rampant Dragon, On Which I Am Mounted, See How He Bends His Once Stiff Neck To His Rider, Champing His Checked Bit And Pawing The Dust, Impatient To Leap Around The Globe. Genius Is Prescient, Foresees Its Own Might. Man Is Striving Through These Iron-ribbed, Steam-sped Hippogriffs, To Recover His Lost Ubiquity And Omnipotence, And Threatens Soon To Grasp In His Ample Palm, And Fix With Flaming Eye-ball, The Elemental Forces!