To the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow.

The past is always attractive because it is drained of fear.

Histories are a kind of distilled newspapers.

Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.

There are depths in man that go to the lowest hell, and heights that reach the highest heaven, for are not both heaven and hell made out of him, everlasting miracle and mystery that he is.

Consider in fact, a body of six hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous persons, set to consult about "business," with twenty-seven millions, mostly fools, assiduously listening to them, and checking and criticising them. Was there ever, since the world began, will there ever be till the world end, any "business" accomplished in these circumstances?

The healthy know not of their health, but only the sick: this is the physician's aphorism, and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it.