What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.

Woman is perpetual revolution, and is that element in the world which continually destroys and recreates.

The world so quickly adjusts itself after any loss, that the return of the departed would nearly always throw it, even the circle most interested, into confusion.

Nothing shows one who his friends are like prosperity and ripe fruit.

One discovers a friend by chance, and cannot but feel regret that 20 or 30 years of life may have been spent without the least knowledge of him.

You want to hate somebody, if you can, just to keep your powers of discrimination bright, and to save yourself from becoming a mere mush of good-nature.

The tenure of a literary reputation is the most uncertain and fluctuating of all.