Everything that Mr Smallweed’s grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life he has never bred a single butterfly.
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.
Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before – more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.
The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance.
Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.
Perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.
Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.
In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease – a terrible passing inclination to die of it.
You can’t make a head and brains out of a brass knob with nothing in it. You couldn’t do it when your uncle George was living much less when he’s dead.
Of little worth as life is when we misuse it, it is worth that effort. It would cost nothing to lay down if it were not.
But, in this separation I associate you only with the good and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you have done far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may.
Good never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning.
A smattering of everything, and a knowledge of nothing.
Poverty and oysters always seem to go together.
The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings.
Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.
The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states.
The more man knows of man, the better for the common brotherhood among men.
The forces that affect our lives, the influences that mold and shape us, are often like whispers in a different room, teasingly indistinct, apprehended only with difficulty.
And numerous indeed are the hearts to which Christmas brings a brief season of happiness and enjoyment.