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.

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

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!

Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

We forge the chains we wear in life.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

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

He would make a lovely corpse.

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.