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.

Love never stands still; it must inevitably be either growing or decaying - especially the love of marriage.

Human life is so full of pain, that once past the youthful delusion that a sad countenance is interesting, and an incurable woe the most delightful thing possible, the mind instinctively turns where it can get rest, and cheer and sunshine. And the friend who can bring to it the largest portion of these is, of a natural necessity, the most useful, the most welcome, and the most dear.

there is nothing so absolute as the tyranny of weakness.

The world! It is a word capable of as diverse interpretations or misinterpretations as the thing itself - a thing by various people supposed to belong to heaven, man, or the devil, or alternatively to all three.

Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor to measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together.

There are no judgments so harsh as those of the erring, the inexperienced, and the young.