There are some books and characters so pleasant, or rather which contain so much that is pleasant, that criticism is perplexed or silent. The hounds are perpetually at fault among the sweet-scented herbs and flowers that grow at the base of Etna.

Where we find echoes, we generally find emptiness and hollowness; it is the contrary with the echoes of the heart.

There is scarcely a man who is not conscious of the benefits which his own mind has received from the performance of single acts of benevolence. How strange that so few of us try a course of the same medicine!

Sombre thoughts and fancies often require a little real soil or substance to flourish in; they are the dark pine-trees which take root in, and frown over the rifts of the scathed and petrified heart, and are chiefly nourished by the rain of unavailing tears, and the vapors of fancy.

Where there is much general deformity nature has often, perhaps generally, accorded some one bodily grace even in over-measure. So, no doubt, with the intellect and disposition, only it is frequently less apparent, and we give ourselves but little trouble to discover it.

Strict punctuality is perhaps the cheapest virtue which can give force to an otherwise utterly insignificant character.

Nobility of birth is like a cipher; it has no power in itself, like wealth or talent; but, it tells with all the power of a cipher when added to either of the other two.