The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.

If a man lives to any considerable age, it can not be denied that he laments his imprudences, but I notice he often laments his youth a deal more bitterly and with a more genuine intonation.

The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.

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

It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but not impossible that it may respect or sympathize; so a man would rather leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face.

Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality.

There is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect.