While tenderness of feeling and susceptibility to generous emotions are accidents of temperament, goodness is an achievement of the will and a quality of the life.

Most long lives resemble those threads of gossamer, the nearest approach to nothing unmeaningly prolonged, scarce visible pathways of some worm from his cradle to his grave.

Silence is sorrow's best food.

O reputation! dearer far than life.

Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.

Take winter as you find him, and he turns out to be a thoroughly honest fellow; with no nonsense in him, which is a great comfort in the long-run.

Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.