A mother is the best friend God ever gave.

The trouble with men of sense is that they are so dreadfully in earnest all the while.

The loveliest faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy.

Character is very much a matter of health.

The highest excellence is seldom attained in more than one vocation. The roads leading to distinction in separate pursuits diverge, and the nearer we approach the one, the farther we recede from the other.

Wit must be without effort. Wit is play, not work; a nimbleness of the fancy, not a laborious effort of the will; a license, a holiday, a carnival of thought and feeling, not a trifling with speech, a constraint upon language, a duress upon words.

The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament.