A promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made.

Enough if every age produce two or three critics of this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to understand them.

Far better, and more cheerfully, I could dispense with some part of the downright necessaries of life, than with certain circumstances of elegance and propriety in the daily habits of using them.

Even imperfection itself may have its ideal or perfect state.

Grief even in a child hates the light and shrinks from human eyes.

Flowers... that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their coloring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children - honored as the jewelry of God only by them - when suddenly the voice of Christianity, counter-signing the voice of infancy, raised them to a grandeur transcending the Hebrew throne, although founded by God himself, and pronounced Solomon in all his glory not to be arrayed like one of these.

Reserve is the truest expression of respect towards those who are its objects.