“At no time are people so sedulously careful to keep their trifling appointments, attend to their ordinary occupations, and thus put a commonplace aspect on life, as when conscious of some secret that if suspected would make them look monstrous in the general eye.”

There is great incongruity in this idea of monuments, since those to whom they are usually dedicated need no such recognition to embalm their memory; and any man who does, is not worthy of one.

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.

We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.

Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.

I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.

Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream.

There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity.

We go all wrong by too strenuous a resolution to go right.

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!

Generosity is the flower of justice.

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.

Happiness is like a butterfly.

There is something truer and more real, than what we can see with the eyes, and touch with the finger.

What we call real estate – the solid ground to build a house on – is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.

Those from whose pocket the salary is drawn, and by whose appointment the officer was made, have always a right to discuss the merits of their officers, and their modes of exercising the duties they are paid to perform.

Man hath his daily work of body or mind Appointed.

My dental hygienist is cute. Every time I visit, I eat a whole package of Oreo cookies while waiting in the lobby. Sometimes she has to cancel the rest of the afternoon’s appointments.

Everything comes gradually and at its appointed hour.

I am invariably late for appointments – sometimes as much as two hours. I’ve tried to change my ways but the things that make me late are too strong, and too pleasing.

Just made an appointment with the eye doctor because I don’t know what I saw in you.

Only God who appointed me will remove me.

In our darkest moments, when we sin or are disoriented, we always have an appointment with God.