I cannot love evergreens - they are the misanthropes of nature. To them the spring brings no promise, the autumn no decline; they are cut off from the sweetest of all ties with their kind - sympathy. ... I will have no evergreens in my garden; when the inevitable winter comes, every beloved plant and favorite tree shall drop together - no solitary fir left to triumph over the companionship of decay.

of all the follies that we can commit, the greatest is to hesitate.

Affection exaggerates its own offenses.

who has not experienced, at some time or other, that words had all the relief of tears?

If there be any one habit which more than another is the dry rot of all that is high and generous in youth, it is the habit of ridicule.

There is a large stock on hand; but somehow or other, nobody's experience ever suits us but our own.

there can be neither politically nor morally a good which is not universal ... we cannot reform for a time or for a class, but for all and for the whole, and our very interests will draw us together in one wide bond of sympathy.