It is a hard, embittering thing to have one's kind feelings and good intentions cast back in one's teeth.

But smiles and tears are so alike with me, they are neither of them confined to any particular feelings: I often cry when I am happy, and smile when I am sad.

Preserve me from such cordiality! It is like handling briar-roses and may-blossoms - bright enough to the eye, and outwardly soft to the touch, but you know there are thorns beneath, and every now and then you feel them too; and perhaps resent the injury by crushing them in till you have destroyed their power, though somewhat to the detriment of your own fingers.

The end of Religion is not to teach us how to die, but how to live.

What a fool you must be," said my head to my heart, or my sterner to my softer self.

If you would have a boy to despise his mother, let her keep him at home, and spend her life in petting him up, and slaving to indulge his follies and caprices.

A man must have something to grumble about; and if he cant complain that his wife harries him to death with her perversity and ill-humour, he must complain that she wears him out with her kindness and gentleness.