Happiness is not an end - it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence. The Omnipotent Himself could never be supposed by any, save those who out of their own human selfishness construct the attributes of Divinity, to be absorbed throughout eternity in the contemplation of His own ineffable bliss, were it not identical with His ineffable goodness and love.

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.

absence ... smothers into decay a rootless fancy but often nourishes the least seed of a true affection into full-flowering love.

Better no marriage, than a marriage short of the best.

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.

Those whose own light is quenched are often the light-bringers.

The wonder is not that some married people are less happy than they hoped to be, but that any married people, out of the honeymoon, or even in it, are ever happy at all.