When our children die, we drop them into the unknown, shuddering with fear. We know that they go out from us, and we stand, and pity, and wonder. If we receive news, that a hundred thousand dollars had been left them by some one dying, we should be thrown into an ecstasy of rejoicing; but when they have gone home to God, we stand, and mourn, and pine, and wonder at the mystery of Providence.

The reason that men are so slow to confess their vices is because they have not yet abandoned them.

Laws are not masters but servants, and he rules them who obey them.

No town can fail of beauty, though its walks were gutters and its houses hovels, if venerable trees make magnificent colonnades along its streets.

Some men are, in regard to ridicule, like tin-roofed buildings in regard to hail: all that hits them bounds rattling off; not a stone goes through.

Reason can tell how love affects us, but cannot tell what love is.

It usually takes a hundred years to make a law, and then, after it has done its work; it usually takes a hundred years to get rid of it.