A blessed companion is a book--a book that, fitly chosen, is a lifelong friend...a book that, at a touch, pours its heart into your own.
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon.
Some people are so fond of ill luck that they run halfway to meet it.
Marriage is like wine. It is not be properly judged until the second glass.
The sharp employ the sharp.
He was so benevolent, so merciful a man that, in his mistaken passion, he would have held an umbrella over a duck in a shower of rain.
The surest way to hit a woman's heart is to take aim kneeling.
Religion's in the heart, not in the knees.
There is peace more destructive of the manhood of living man than war is destructive of his material body.
We love peace, but not peace at any price.
In this world truth can wait; she is used to it.
Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens.
Fortunes made in no time are like shirts made in no time; it's ten to one if they hang long together.
The best thing I know between France and England is the sea.
Love's like the measles - all the worse when it comes late in life.
A man, so to speak, who is not able to bow to his own conscience every morning is hardly in a condition to respectfully salute the world at any other time of the day.
Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest.
Readers are of two sorts: one who goes carefully through a book, and the other who as carefully lets the book go through him.
Nothing can be truer than fairy wisdom. It is as true as sunbeams.
After all there is something about a wedding-gown prettier than in any other gown in the world.
A conservative is a man who will not look at the new moon, out of respect for that 'ancient institution,' the old one
The sharp employ the sharp; verily, a man may be known by his attorney.
If an earthquake were to engulf England tomorrow, the English would manage to meet and dine somewhere among the rubbish, just to celebrate the event.
There are some people as obtuse in recognizing an argument as they are in appreciating wit. You couldn't drive it into their heads with a hammer.
Nothing is so beneficial to a young author as the advice of a man whose judgment stands constitutionally at the freezing-point.
Nature designed us to be of good cheer.
A man is in no danger so long as he talks his love; but to write it is to impale himself on his own pothooks.
Malice blunts the point of wit.
Wishes, at least, are the easy pleasures of the poor.
Literature, like a gypsy, to be picturesque, should be a little ragged.
Even the worse of jobs has their pleasures, if I were a grave digger or a hangmen, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment.
Jewels! It's my belief that when woman was made, jewels were invented only to make her the more mischievous.
Quality, not quantity, is my measure.
Self-defense is the clearest of all laws; and for this reason - the lawyers didn't make it.
I would like to have a second chance at my first love.
Man owes two solemn debts--one to society, and one to-nature. It is only when he pays the second that he covers the first.
The language of women should be luminous, but not voluminous.
What a fine-looking thing is war! Yet, dress it as we may, dress and feather it, daub it with gold, huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it,--what is it, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform!
A creature undefiled by the taint of the world, unvexed by its injustice, unwearied by its hollow pleasures; a being fresh from the source of light, with something of its universal lustre in it. If childhood be this, how holy the duty to see that in its onward growth it shall be no other!
