There are moments of mingled sorrow and tenderness, which hallow the caresses of affection.
Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear legitimate dulness to maturity; and to glory in the vigour and luxuriance of her chance productions.
He who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice.
Jealous people poison their own banquet and then eat it.
Christmas is here, Merry old Christmas, Gift-bearing Christmas, Day of grand memories, King of the year!
A mother is the truest friend we have when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity.
Marriage is the torment of one, the felicity of two, the strife and enmity of three.
Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot, or herding together in turbulent mobs? No – no, your lean, hungry men who are continually worrying society, and setting the whole community by the ears.
Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.
The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.
Young lawyers attend the courts, not because they have business there, but because they have no business.
Rising genius always shoots out its rays from among the clouds, but these will gradually roll away and disappear as it ascends to its steady luster.
I’ve had it with you and your emotional constipation!
There is a remembrance of the dead, to which we turn even from the charms of the living. These we would not exchange for the song of pleasure or the bursts of revelry.
Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You’re never as good as you’d like to be. So there’s always something to hope for.
The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.
To one given to day-dreaming, and fond of losing himself in reveries, a sea-voyage is full of subjects for meditation; but then they are the wonders of the deep and of the air, and rather tend to abstract the mind from worldly themes.
It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man – the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse – the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end.
The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible.
There was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was petticoat government.