To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last.

Leisure is gone,--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow wagons, and the peddlers, who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons.

A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful hole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences; and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one loved.

Character is not cut in marble - it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.

Mysterious haunts of echoes old and far, The voice divine of human loyalty.

Habit is the beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectfully and unhappy men to live calmly