There is, by God's grace, an immeasurable distance between late and too late.

I like people to be saints; but I want them to be first and superlatively honest men.

Impassioned characters never attain their mark till they have overshot it.

Love sometimes elevates, creates new qualities, suspends the working of evil inclinations; but only for a day. Love, then, is an Oriental despot, whose glance lifts a slave from the dust, and then consigns him to it again.

To have ideas is to gather flowers; to think is to weave them into garlands.

A good, finished scandal, fully armed and equipped, such as circulates in the world, is rarely the production of a single individual, or even of a single coterie. It sees the light in one; is rocked and nurtured in another; is petted, developed, and attains its growth in a third; and receives its finishing touches only after passing through a multitude of hands. It is a child that can count a host of fathers--all ready to disown it.

If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it.