The person who can be only serious or only cheerful, is but half a man.

The golden line is drawn between winter and summer. Behind all is blackness and darkness and dissolution. Before is hope, and soft airs, and the flowers, and the sweet season of hay; and people will cross the fields, reading or walking with one another; and instead of the rain that soaks death into the heart of green things, will be the rain which they drink with delight; and there will be sleep on the grass at midday, and early rising in the morning, and long moonlight evenings.

Tears and sorrows and losses are a part of what must be experienced in this present state of life: some for our manifest good, and ail, therefore, it is trusted, for our good concealed;--for our final and greatest good.

The same people who can deny others everything are famous for refusing themselves nothing.

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.

I loved my friend for his gentleness, his candor, his good repute, his freedom even from my own livelier manner, his calm and reasonable kindness. It was not any particular talent that attracted me to him, or i anything striking whatsoever. I should say in one word, it was his goodness.

If you are melancholy for the first time, you will find, upon a little inquiry, that others have been melancholy many times, and yet are cheerful now.