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

About the greatest virtue a friend can have, is to be able to hold her tongue; and through this, like all virtues carried to extremity, may grow into a fault, and do great harm, still, it never can do so much harm as that horrible laxity and profligacy of speech which is a the root of half the quarrels, cruelties, and injustices of the world.

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.

We never discover the value of things till we have lost them.

... what a fatal thing in pictures, books, or human lives, is a lack of proportion.

never was there a thoroughly noble nature without some romance in it.

The present only is a man's possession; the past is gone out of his hand wholly, irrevocably. He may suffer from it, learn from it,--in degree, perhaps, expiate it; but to brood over it is utter madness.