Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible.

His stories are good to hear at night, because we can dream about them asleep; and good in the morning, too, because then we can dream about them awake. (Cowslip)

In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point.

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.

Most people are so constituted that they can only be virtuous in a certain routine; an irregular course of life demoralizes them.

It is very singular how the fact of a man's death often seems to give people a truer idea of his character, whether for good or evil, than they have ever possessed while he was living and acting among them.

The present is burdened too much with the past. We have not time, in our earthly existence, to appreciate what is warm with life, and immediately around us.