There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk; to be affable, gay, ready, clear, and welcome.

The first experience can never be repeated. The first love, the first sun-rise, the first South Sea Island, are memories apart, and touched a virginity of sense.

Death is given in a kiss; the dearest kindnesses are fatal; and into this life, where one thing preys upon another, the child too often makes its entrance from the mother's corpse.

He who sows hurry reaps indigestion.

Wherever we are, it is but a stage on the way to somewhere else, and whatever we do, however well we do it, it is only a preparation to do something else that shall be different.

O wind, a-blowing all day long, O wind, that sings so loud a song!

And if a man reads very hard, as the old anecdote reminds us, he will have little time for thought.