Praise is sometimes a good thing for the diffident and the despondent. It teaches them properly to rely on the kindness of others.

Strange mystery of our nature, that those in whom genius develops itself in imagination, thus taking its most ethereal form, should yet be the most dependent on the opinions of others!

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.

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

Suicide and antipathy to fires in a bedroom seem to be among the national characteristics. Perhaps the same moral cause may originate both.

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

Perhaps, from an innate desire of justification, sorrow always exaggerates itself. Memory is quite one of Job's friends; and the past is ever ready to throw its added darkness on the present.