One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me.

Midnight,--strange mystic hour,--when the veil between the frail present and the eternal future grows thin.

So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women.

No ornament of a house can compare with books; they are constant company in a room, even when you are not reading them.

It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to honest and noble natures.

intemperance in eating is one of the most fruitful of all causes of disease and death.

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