You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others.

The very flexibility and ease which make men's friendships so agreeable while they endure, make them the easier to destroy and forget. And a man who has a few friends, or one who has a dozen (if there be any one so wealthy on this earth), cannot forget on how precarious a base his happiness reposes; and how by a stroke or two of fate --a death, a few light words, a piece of stamped paper, a woman's bright eyes --he may be left, in a month, destitute of all.

A birdie with a yellow bill Hoped upon the window sill, Cocked his shining eye and said: 'Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-'ead?

The physician...is the flower (such as it is) of our civilization.

You cannot run away from weakness; you must some time fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?

I've a grand memory for forgetting.

This profusion of eccentricities, this dream in masonry and living rock is not a drop scene in a theatre, but a city in the world of reality.