There is absolutely no such thing as reading but by a candle. We have tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, and in sultry arbours, but it was labor thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teasing, like so many coquets, that will have you all to their self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By the midnight taper, the writers digests his meditations. By the same light we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch the flame, the odour.

The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a school-boy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it.

I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue.

I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.

Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them.

We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been.

No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.