A mother is the truest friend we have when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity.

Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.

There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature.

How we delight to build our recollections upon some basis of reality,--a place, a country, a local habitation! how the events of life, as we look back upon them, have grown into the well-remembered background of the places where they fell upon us! Here is some sunny garden or summer lane, beautified and canonized forever, with the flood of a great joy; and here are dim and silent places,--rooms always shadowed and dark to us, whatever they may be to others,--where distress or death came once, and since then dwells forevermore.

There is a certain artificial polish, a commonplace vivacity acquired by perpetually mingling in the beau monde; which, in the commerce of world, supplies the place of natural suavity and good-humour, but is purchased at the expense of all original and sterling traits of character.

One point is certain, that truth is one and immutable; until the jurors all agree, they cannot all be right.

I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the town-crier.