Expenditure--like ugliness and errors--becomes a totally new thing when we attach our own personality to it, and measure it by that wide difference which is manifest (in our own sensations) between ourselves and others.

Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.

... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.

Music sweeps by me as a messenger - Carrying a message that is not for me

A mother's yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.

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.

Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.