Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people - as may be noticed of most young children - does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years.

Society, in the aggregate, is no fool. It is astonishing what an amount of "eccentricity" it will stand from anybody who takes the bull by the horns, too fearless or too indifferent to think of consequences.

A parent, unlike a poet, is not born - he is made.

Our natural and happiest life is when we lose ourselves in the exquisite absorption of home, the delicious retirement of dependent love.

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.

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.

A true test of friendship, to sit or walk with a friend for an hour in perfect silence , without wearying of one another's company.