Literature is a great staff, but a very sorry crutch.

O woman! in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!

Independently of the curious circumstance that such tales should be found existing in very different countries and languages, which augurs a greater poverty of human invention than we would have expected, there is also a sort of wild fairy interest in them, which makes me think them fully better adapted to awaken the imagination and soften the heart of childhood than the good-boy stories which have been in later years composed for them.

I like a highland friend who will stand by me not only when I am in the right, but when I am a little in the wrong.

Affection can withstand very severe storms of vigor, but not a long polar frost of indifference.

For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen of Lochinvar.

Adversity is like the period of the rain. . . cold, comfortless, unfriendly to people and to animals; yet from that season have their birth the flower, the fruit, the date, the rose and the pomegranate.