Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things We murder to dissect

That best portion of a man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.

The clouds that gather round the setting sun do take a sober colouring from an eye that hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, to me the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

For oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude

We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.

O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in everything.

Not in Utopia, -- subterranean fields, --Or some secreted island, Heaven knows whereBut in the very world, which is the worldOf all of us, -- the place where in the endWe find our happiness, or not at all