It is rare that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.

Everyone knows that drunkards and lovers have a protecting diety.

Dantes passed through all the stages of torture natural to prisoners in suspense. He was sustained at first by that pride of conscious innocence which is the sequence to hope; then he began to doubt his own innocence, which justified in some measure the governor's belief in his mental alienation; and then, relaxing his sentiment of pride, he addressed his supplications, not to God, but to man. God is always the last resource. Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance.

Youth is a blossom whose fruit is love; happy is he who plucks it after watching it slowly ripen.

I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.

It is the infirmity of our nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than those who groan by our sides!

So he went down, smiling sceptically and mutter the final word in human wisdom: 'Perhaps!