Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement; it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.

I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what is to be done in given circumstances and does it. He does not beat about the bush for difficulties or excuses, but goes the shortest and most effectual way to work to attain his own ends, or to accomplish a useful object.

The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and bear great ones as well as we can.

It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.

The best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud.

Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?

Words are the only things that last for ever.