A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

Don't you meddle with me, and I won't meddle with you.

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

The impulse to confession almost always requires the presence of a fresh ear and a fresh heart; and in our moments of spiritual need, the man to whom we have no tie but our common nature, seems nearer to us than mother, brother, or friend. Our daily familiar life is but a hiding of ourselves from each other behind a screen of trivial words and deeds, and those who sit with us at the same hearth, are often the farthest off from the deep human soul within us, full of unspoken evil and unacted good.

I take a dose of mathematics every day to prevent my brain from becoming quite soft.

Affection is the broadest basis of a good life.

I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest--I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.