How little praise warms out of a man the good that is in him, as the sneer of contempt which he feels is unjust chill the ardor to excel.

Agreeable surprises are the perquisites of youth.

There is no policy like politeness; and a good manner is the best thing in the world either to get a good name, or to supply the want of it.

Irony is to the high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank, he implies it in the politest terms he can invent.

Oratory, like the drama, abhors lengthiness; like the drama, it must keep doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes.

Of all the conditions to which the heart is subject suspense is one that most gnaws and cankers into the frame. One little month of that suspense, when it involves death, we are told by an eye witness in "Wakefield on the Punishment of Death," is sufficient to plough fixed lines and furrows in a convict of five and twenty,--sufficient, to dash the brown hair with grey, and to bleach the grey to white.

Two lives that once part are as ships that divide.