It has been my fate in a long life of production to be credited chiefly with the equivocal virtue of industry, a quality so excellent in morals, so little satisfactory in art.

It is so seldom in this world that things come just when they are wanted.

Temptations come, as a general rule, when they are sought.

... I have always been a disappointment to my friends. I have no gift of talk, not much to say; and though I have always been an excellent listener, that only succeeds under auspicious circumstances.

Even in misery we love to be foremost, to have the bitter in our cup acknowledged as more bitter than that of others.

Spring cold is like the poverty of a poor man who has had a fortune left him - better days are coming.

there are some people who never learn; indeed, few people learn by experience, so far as I have ever seen.