the blessings of matrimony, like those of poverty, belong rather to philosophy than reality.

To this hour, the great science and duty of politics is lowered by the petty leaven of small and personal advantage.

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.

Nothing but love can answer to love; no affection, no kindness, no care, can supply its place: it is its own sweet want.

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.

The stars are so far, far away!

Memory has many conveniences, and, among others, that of foreseeing things as they have afterwards happened.