To bring the best human qualities to anything like perfection, to fill them with the sweet juices of courtesy and charity, prosperity, or, at all events, a moderate amount of it, is required,--just as sunshine is needed for the ripening of peaches and apricots.

A thought may be very commendable as a thought, but I value it chiefly as a window through which I can obtain insight on the thinker.

Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse. If we attempt to steal a glimpse of its features it disappears.

The globe has been circumnavigated, but no man ever yet has; you may survey a kingdom and note the result in maps, but all the savants in the world could not produce a reliable map of the poorest human personality.

We bury love; Forgetfulness grows over it like grass: That is a thing to weep for, not the dead.

An old novel has a history of its own.

The spot of ground on which a man has stood is forever interesting to him.