Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.

One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors for to dwell long upon them is to add to the offense, and repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by somewhat better, and which is as free and original as if they had not been.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

Let no one think that I do not love the old ministers. They were, probably, the best men in their generation, and they deserve that their biographies should fill the pages of the town histories. If I could but hear the "glad tidings" of which they tell, and which, perchance, they heard, I might write in a worthier strain than this.

As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, we were reminded that it was a rare imagination which first taught that the stars are worlds, and had conferred a great benefit on mankind.