Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within, as on the state of things without and around us.

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

Good fortune opens the hand as well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when we have largely received, but to afford a vent to the unusual ebullition of the sensations.

I'm just going to write because I cannot help it.

Fortune is proverbially called changeful, yet her caprice often takes the form of repeating again and again a similar stroke of luck in the same quarter.

What have I to do with millions [of people]? The eighty I know despise me.

[I]n his presence I thoroughly lived.