A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

I easily sink into mere absorption of what other minds have done, and should like a whole life for that alone.

When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people's tricks.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

For pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.

Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly -- something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.