Taste is something quite different from fashion, superior to fashion.

When Fate wills that something should come to pass, she sends forth a million of little circumstances to clear and prepare the way.

Benevolence and feeling ennoble the most trifling actions.

Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life, of the times, of the manners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasure, the laughter, the ridicules of society. The old times live again. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?

Why do they always put mud into coffee on board steamers? Why does the tea generally taste of boiled boots?

Our measure of rewards and punishments is most partial and incomplete, absurdly inadequate, utterly worldly; and we wish to continue it into the next world. Into that next and awful world we strive to pursue men, and send after them our impotent paltry verdicts of condemnation or acquittal. We set up our paltry little rod to measure heaven immeasurable.

What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.