Men do not go out to meet misfortune as we do. They learn it; and we--we divine it.

My sole defense against the natural horror which death inspires is to love beyond it.

A friendship will be young after the lapse of half a century; a passion is old at the end of three months.

The symptoms of compassion and benevolence, in some people, are like those minute guns which warn you that you are in deadly peril.

Prayer has a right to the word "ineffable." It is an hour of outpourings which words cannot express,--of that interior speech which we do not articulate, even when we employ it.

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.

Old age is not one of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies.