What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dullness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old sundials! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished? If its business-use be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance.

Cultivate simplicity or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart.

I am accounted by some people as a good man. How cheap that character is acquired! Pay your debts, don't borrow money, nor twist your kitten's neck off, nor disturb a congregation, etc., your business is done. I know things of myself, which would make every friend I have fly me as a plague patient.

For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print.

Whose wit in the combat, as gentle as bright, Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade.

A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being.

The English writer, Charles Lamb, said one day: "I hate that man." "But you don't know him." "Of course, I don't," said Lamb. "Do you think I could possibly hate a man I know?"