O, because I have had only that kind of benevolence which consists in lying on a sofa, and cursing the church and clergy for not being martyrs and confessors. One can see, you know, very easily, how others ought to be martyrs.

For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one’s feelings, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still we must eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again, - still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions, - pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold, mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled.

Children will grow up substantially what they are by nature--and only that.

I b'lieve in religion, and one of these days, when I've got matters tight and snug, I calculates to tend to my soul.

Let us resolve: First, to attain the grace of silence; second, to deem all fault finding that does no good a sin; third, to practice the grade and virtue of praise.

The longest day must have its close — the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to an eternal night, and the night of the just to an eternal day.

Great as the planning were for the dinner, the lot was so contrived that not a soul in the house be supposed to be kept from the break of day ceremony of Blessing in the church.