we are so scornful when we are young!

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

There can be - there ought to be - no medium course; a love-affair is either sober earnest or contemptible folly, if not wickedness: to gossip about it is, in the first instance, intrusive, unkind, or dangerous; in the second, simply silly.

An author departs; he does not die.

Now, I have nothing to say against uncles in general. They are usually very excellent people, and very convenient to little boys and girls.

One cannot make oneself, but one can sometimes help a little in the making of somebody else. It is well.

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.