Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

One can begin so many things with a new person! - even begin to be a better man.

All writing seems to me worse in the state of proof than in any other form. In manuscript one's own wisdom is rather remarkable to one, but in proof it has the effect of one's private furniture repeated in the shop windows. And then there is the sense that the worst errors will go to press unnoticed!

... when one's outward lot is perfect, the sense of inward imperfection is the more pressing.

Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.

Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches, just saved from shipwreck. Can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves?