Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when occupied with the present.
— Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Delicious tears! The heart's own dew.
Were it not better to forget than to remember and regret?
I think hearts are very much like glasses. If they do not break with the first ring, they usually last a considerable time.
All sweeping assertions are erroneous.
Enthusiasm is the divine particle in our composition: with it we are great, generous, and true; without it, we are little, false, and mean.
We might have been - these are but common words, and yet they make the sum of life's bewailing.
Ah, tell me not that memory sheds gladness o'er the past, what is recalled by faded flowers, save that they did not last?
We need to suffer, that we may learn to pity.
How disappointment tracks the steps of hope.
A brier rose whose buds yield fragrant harvest for the honey bee.
No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.
There is a large stock on hand; but somehow or other, nobody's experience ever suits us but our own.
Whatever people in general do not understand, they are always prepared to dislike; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious.
Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well is the great art of social life.
Few, save the poor, feel for the poor.
An apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence.