To impress others we must be earnest; to amuse them, it is only necessary to be kindly and fanciful.

Professed authors who overestimate their vocation are too full of themselves to be agreeable companions. The demands of their egotism are inveterate. They seem to be incapable of that abandon which is the requisite condition of social pleasure; and bent upon winning a tribute of admiration, or some hint which they can turn to the account of pen-craft, there is seldom in their company any of the delightful unconsciousness which harmonizes a circle.

To impress others we must be earnest; to amuse them, it is only necessary to be kindly and fanciful.

Reason is not time only interpreter of life. The fountain of action is in time feelings.

Credulity is perhaps a weakness almost inseparable from eminently truthful characters.

Whatever is genuine in social relations endures, despite of time, error, absence, and destiny; and that which has no inherent vitality had better die at once. A great poet has truly declared that constancy is no virtue, but a fact.

There are beauties of character which, like the night-blooming cereus, are closed against the glare and turbulence of every-day life, and bloom only in shade and solitude, and beneath the quiet stars.