How the sting of poverty, or small means, is gone when one keeps house for one's own comfort and not for the comfort of one's neighbors.

... it does not do to tell great people anything unpleasant.

It is not the smallest use to try to make people good, unless you try at the same time - and they feel that you are trying - to make them happy. And you rarely can make another happy, unless you are happy yourself.

A perfect marriage is as rare as a perfect love. Could it be otherwise, when both men and women are so imperfect? Could aught else be expected? Yet all do expect it.

But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

Money is meant not for hoarding, but for using; the aim of life should be to use it in the right way - to spend as much as we can lawfully spend, both upon ourselves and others. And sometimes it is better to do this in our lifetime, when we can see that it is well spent, than to leave it to the chance spending of those that come after us.

Do your neighbour good by all means in your power, moral as well as physical - by kindness, by patience, by unflinching resistance against every outward evil - by the silent preaching of your own contrary life. But if the only good you can do him is by talking at him, or about him - nay, even to him, if it be in a self-satisfied, super-virtuous style - such as I earnestly hope the present writer is not doing - you had much better leave him alone.