All language is rhetorical, and even the senses are poets.

All spiritual interests are supported by animal life.

Mortality has its compensations; one is that all evils are transitory, another that better times may come.

It is characteristic of spontaneous friendship to take on first, without enquiry and almost at first sight, the unseen doings and unspoken sentiments of our friends; the parts known give us evidence enough that the unknown parts cannot be much amiss.

Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any honor is not willing to live except in its own way, and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all.

To understand oneself is the classic form of consolation; to elude oneself is the romantic.

We crave support in vanity, as we do in religion, and never forgive contradictions in that sphere.