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.

Habit is a second nature, and what was at first pleasure, is next necessity.

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

The past is perpetual youth to the heart.

Whatever people in general do not understand, they are al ways prepared to dislike; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious.

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.

Curiosity is its own suicide.