Well, Buttermere, this is a day that is good to live and breathe in, that makes a man feel in his prime. Standing here in front of my house, I feel as young as when I moved into it thirty years ago, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. What aged man would you take me to be, as I step as it were casually into your view?

I never agree with the compliments paid to it. It is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary.

Duty is seldom liked either by the doer or the object ... And why should it be? It is not often of advantage to either.

My youth is escaping without giving me anything it owes me.

It is better to be drunk with loss and to beat the ground, than to let the deeper things gradually escape.

There is more difference within the sexes than between them.

Well, of course, people are only human... But it really does not seem much for them to be.