Friendship is far more delicate than love.

Friendship is far more delicate than love. Quarrels and fretful complaints are attractive in the last, offensive in the first. And the very things which heap fewel on the fire of ardent passion, choke and extinguish sober and true regard. On the other hand, time, which is sure to destroy that love of which half certainly depends on desire, is as sure to increase a friendship founded on talents, warm with esteem, and ambitious of success for the object of it.

A physician can sometimes parry the scythe of death, but has no power over the sand in the hourglass.

No companion however wise, no friend however useful, can be to me what my mother has been: her image will long pursue my fancy; her voice for ever hang in my ears: may her precepts but sink into my heart!

We look on those approaching the banks of a river all must cross, with ten times the interest they excited when dancing in the meadow.

I think character never changes; the Acorn becomes an Oak, which is very little like an Acorn to be sure, but it never becomes an Ash.

'Tis never for their wisdom that one loves the wisest, or for their wit that one loves the wittiest; 'tis for benevolence, and virtue, and honest fondness, one loves people...