Yet through all, we know this tangled skein is in the hands of One, Who sees the end from the beginning: He shall unravel all.

There is a slow-growing beauty which only comes to perfection in old age.... I have seen sweeter smiles on a lip of seventy than I ever saw on a lip of seventeen. There is the beauty of youth, and there is also the beauty of holiness—a beauty much more seldom met; and more frequently found in the arm-chair by the fire, with grandchildren around its knee, than in the ball-room or the promenade.

The discovery of a grey hair when you are brushing out your whiskers of a morning - first fallen flake of the coming snows of age - is a disagreeable thing.

The greatness of an artist or a writer does not depend on what he has in common with other artists and writers, but on what he has peculiar to himself.

Trees are your best antiques

The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.

One never hugs one's good luck so affectionately as when listening to the relation of some horrible misfortunes which has overtaken others.