Imagination is the first faculty wanting in those that do harm to their kind.

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

What happiness is there which is not purchased with more or less of pain?

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

Laughing is not the first expression of joy. ... A person laughs in idleness, for fun, not for joy. Joy has nothing, nothing but the old way of tears.

The incomprehensibleness of women is an old theory, but what is that to the curious wondering observation with which wives, mothers, and sisters watch the other unreasoning animal in those moments when he has snatched the reins out of their hands, and is not to be spoken to! . It is best to let him come to, and feel his own helplessness.

Against the long years when family bonds make up all that is happiest in life, there must always be reckoned those moments of agitation and revolution, during which the bosom of a family is the most unrestful and disturbing place in existence.