To receive a present handsomely and in a right spirit, even when you have none to give in return, is to give one in return.

The more sensible a woman is, supposing her not to be masculine, the more attractive she is in her proportionate power to entertain.

The very greatest genius, after all, is not the greatest thing in the world, any more than the greatest city in the world is the country or the sky. It is the concentration of some of its greatest powers, but it is not the greatest diffusion of its might. It is not the habit of its success, the stability of its sereneness.

Sympathizing and selfish people are alike, both given to tears.

Oh for a seat in some poetic nook, Just hid with trees and sparkling with a brook!

For the most part, we should pray rather in aspiration than petition, rather by hoping than requesting; in which spirit also we may breathe a devout wish for a blessing on others upon occasions when it might be presumptuous to beg it.

Many birds and beasts are...as fit to go to Heaven as many human beings - people who talk of their seats there with as much confidence as if they had booked them at a box office.