Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive. The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all, and to burst with boldness and good-will into the silent sea of their souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations.

You, sir, are the most phantom-like of all; you are a mere dream

Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.

To see and know the worst is to take from Fear her main advantage.

Wise people say it is folly to think anybody perfect; and as to likes and dislikes, we should be friendly to all, and worship none

You have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face.

If there are words and wrongs like knives, whose deep inflicted lacerations never heal - cutting injuries and insults of serrated and poison-dripping edge - so, too, there are consolations of tone too fine for the ear not fondly and for ever to retain their echo: caressing kindnesses - loved, lingered over through a whole life, recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answering the call with undimmed shine, out of that raven cloud foreshadowing Death himself.