The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.

Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.

Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

We forge the chains we wear in life.

There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.

Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he’s well dressed. There ain’t much credit in that.

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?

Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.

He would make a lovely corpse.

It’s my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.

Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

He had but one eye and the pocket of prejudice runs in favor of two.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.

Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.

The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

‘Tis love that makes the world go round, my baby.

Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.

The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you.

We are so very ‘umble.

Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.

A boy’s story is the best that is ever told.

This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.

Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.

Do you spell it with a “V” or a “W”?’ inquired the judge. ‘That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my Lord’.

There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.

Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.

A person who can’t pay gets another person who can’t pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don’t make either of them able to do a walking-match.

You don’t carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.

Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows – and china.