When thus the heart is in a vein Of tender thought, the simplest strain Can touch it with peculiar power.

We do not go to the theatre like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it.

I could never hate anyone I knew.

Is the world all grown up? Is childhood dead? Or is there not in the bosom of the wisest and the best some of the child's heart left, to respond to its earliest enchantments?

Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.

Alas! how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love! Hearts that the world in vain had tried, And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm when waves were rough, Yet in a sunny hour fall off, Like ships that have gone down at sea When heaven was all tranquillity.