Everyone else is just cocktails.

I am always easy of belief when the creed pleases me.

My wretched feet, flayed and swollen to lameness by the sharp air of January, began to heal and subside under the gentler breathings of April; the nights and mornings no longer by their Canadian temperature froze the very blood in our veins; we could now endure the play-hour passed in the garden.

Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the North of England.

The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.

Human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy, half fancying it alive and capable of sensation. I could not sleep unless it was folded in my night-gown; and when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it to be happy likewise.

Friendship however is a plant which cannot be forced -- true friendship is no gourd spring up in a night and withering in a day.