Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.

A fool or idiot is one who expects things to happen that never can happen.

Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations. Lydgate's discontent was much harder to bear; it was the sense that there was a grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such fears.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead.

One has to spend many years in learning how to be happy.

The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots.