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.

Little eyes must be good-tempered or they are ruined. They have no other resource. But this will beautify them enough. They are made for laughing, and, should do their duty.

The drama is not a mere copy of nature, not a facsimile. It is the free running hand of genius, under the impression of its liveliest wit or most passionate impulses, a thousand times adorning or feeling all as it goes; and you must read it, as the healthy instinct of audiences almost always does, if the critics will let them alone, with a grain of allowance, and a tendency to go away with as much of it for use as is necessary, and the rest for the luxury of laughter, pity, or poetical admiration.

The last excessive feelings of delight are always grave.

Those who have lost an infant are never, in a way, without an infant.

Whatever evil befalls us, we ought to ask ourselves... how we can turn it into good. So shall we take occasion, from one bitter root, to raise perhaps many flowers.

Light is, perhaps, the most wonderful of all visible things.