Shall we not spend our immortal life together? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe! - Nathaniel Hawthorne

...people always grow more foolish, unless they take care to grow wiser and wiser...

If his inmost heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that dream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a thousand realities.

So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow, while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves.