Appearances have very little to do with happiness.

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

Man may content himself with the applause of the world and the homage paid to his intellect, but woman's heart has holier idols.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offense. ... Everyone who contributes to the 'too much' of literature is doing grave social injury.

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.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

We are led on, like little children, by a way we know not.