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.

Men praise poverty, as the African worships Mumbo Jumbo--from terror of the malign power, and a desire to propitiate at.

Death, which we are accustomed to consider an evil, really acts for us the friendliest part, and takes away the commonplace of existence.

A man can bear a world's contempt when he has that within which says he's worthy. When he contemns himself, there burns the hell.

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

Pleasure has no logic; it never treads in its own footsteps.

Books are a finer world within the world. (1863)