We do not make a world of our own, but fall into institutions already made, and have to accommodate ourselves to them to be useful at all.

When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work , but the solidest thing we know.

Each religious sect has its own physiognomy. The Methodists have acquired a face; the Quakers, a face; the nuns, a face. An Englishman will pick out a dissenter by his manners.

It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are the literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily.

I--this thought which is called I--is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax.

Tis the privilege of Art Thus to play its cheerful part, Man on earth to acclimate And bend the exile to his fate.