Great orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct shadows to the generations following them. The spell vanishes with the voice.

When friends are at your hearthside met, Sweet courtesy has done its most If you have made each guest forget That he himself is not the host.

Books that have become classics - books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal - always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.

The possession of gold has ruined fewer men than the lack of it.

It is the Lord's Day, and I do believe that cheerful hearts and faces are not unpleasant in His sight.

They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.

Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows in yonder West; the fair, frail palaces, The fading Alps and archipelagoes and great cloud continents of sunset-seas.