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.

... 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.

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

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

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