Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.

He was the meekest of his sex, the mildest of little men. He sidled in and out of a room, to take up the less space. He walked as softly as the Ghost in Hamlet, and more slowly. He carried his head on one side, partly in modest depreciation of himself, partly in modest propitiation of everybody else.

I have heard it said that as we keep our birthdays when we are alive, so the ghosts of dead people, who are not easy in their graves, keep the day they died upon.

Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.

When death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk the world and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes.

I have always thought of Christmas time... as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time.

... what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.