Almost all human affairs are tedious. Everything is too long. Visits, dinners, concerts, plays, speeches, pleadings, essays, sermons, are too long. Pleasure and business labor equally under this defect, or, as I should rather say, this fatal super-abundance.

It has always appeared to me, that there is so much to be done in this world, that all self-inflicted suffering which cannot be turned to good account for others, is a loss - a loss, if you may so express it, to the spiritual world.

We are pleased with one who instantly assents to our opinions, but we love a proselyte.

Few have wished for memory so much as they have longed for forgetfulness.

Extremely foolish advice is likely to be uttered by those who are looking at the laboring vessel from the land.

People resemble still more the time in which they live, than they resemble their fathers.

Always say a kind word if you can, if only that it may come in, perhaps, with singular opportuneness, entering some mournful man's darkened room, like a beautiful firefly, whose happy circumvolutions he cannot but watch, forgetting his many troubles.