The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.

Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate.

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.

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

A good conscience is eight parts of courage.

I've a grand memory for forgetting.

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.