The sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of delight.
Walter Savage LandorWhen a cat flatters ... he is not insincere: you may safely take it for real kindness.
Walter Savage LandorLet me take up your metaphor. Friendship is a vase, which, when it is flawed by heat or violence or accident, may as well be broken at once; it can never be trusted after. The more graceful and ornamental it was, the more clearly do we discern the hopelessness of restoring it to its former state. Coarse stones, if they are fractured, may be cemented again; precious stones, never.
Walter Savage Landor