We live in an ascending scale when we live happily, one thing leading to another in an endless series.

We are not content to pass away entirely from the scenes of our delight; we would leave, if but in gratitude, a pillar and a legend.

An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate.

The difficulty is not to write, but to write what you mean.

It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected.

A bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect.

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.