If they had said that the sun or the moon had gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in creation than the words: Byron is dead!

Instead of boiling up individuals into the species, I would draw a chalk circle round every individuality, and preach to it to keep within that, and preserve and cultivate its identity.

The only thing that makes one place more attractive to me than another is the quantity of heart I find in it.

The surest way to get a thing in this life is to be prepared for doing without it, to the exclusion even of hope.

People who are so dreadfully "devoted" to their wives are so apt, from mere habit, to get devoted to other people's wives as well.

The longer one lives in this hard world motherless, the more a mother's loss makes itself felt.

cracked things often hold out as long as whole things; one takes so much better care of them!