Where a blood relation sobs, an intimate friend should choke up, a distant acquaintance should sigh, a stranger should merely fumble sympathetically with his handkerchief.

I find no change of consequence in grown people, I do not miss the dead. It does not surprise me to hear that this friend or that friend died at such and such a time, because I fully expected that sort of news. But somehow I had made no calculation on the infants. It never occurred to me that infants grow up...These unexpected changes, from infancy to youth, and from youth to maturity, are by far the most startling things I meet with.

I have traveled more than anyone else, and I have noticed that even the angels speak English with an accent.

We take a natural interest in novelties, but it is against nature to take an interest in familiar things.

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.

Don't wake up a woman in love. Let her dream, so that she does not weep when she returns to her bitter reality

It is curious and interesting to notice what an attraction a fussy, mincing, nickel-plated word has for you.