Curses are like processions. They return to the place from which they came.

Travelers describe a tree in the island of Java whose pestiferous exhalations blight every tiny blade of grass within the compass of its shade. So it is with despotism.

The perception of the beautiful is gradual, and not a lightning revelation; it requires not only time, but some study.

Trifling favors are readily acknowledged, though cheaply esteemed; but important ones are most rarely remembered.

A human heart is a skein of such imperceptibly and subtly interwoven threads that even the owner of it is often himself at a loss how to unravel it.

If country life be healthful to the body, it is no less so to the mind.

Fancy borrows much from memory, and so looks back to the past.