... if fiction does not show us a better life than reality, what is the good of it?

A poverty that is universal may be cheerfully borne; it is an individual poverty that is painful and humiliating.

That is the great mistake about the affections. It is not the rise and fall of empires, the birth and death of kings, or the marching of armies that move them most. When they answer from their depths, it is to the domestic joys and tragedies of life.

In any adversity gold can find friends.

There is much said about the wickedness of doing evil that good may come. Alas! there is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.

In all troublous events we may find comfort, though it be only in the negative admission that things might have been worse.

Solitude is such a potential thing. We hear voices in solitude, we never hear in the hurry and turmoil of life; we receive counsels and comforts, we get under no other condition.