.... Faith is the best evidence in the world; it reconciles contradictions and proves impossibilities. It is wonderfully developed in the blind.
.... He who undertakes an “Account of Idiots in All Ages” will find himself committed to the task of compiling most known biographies. Some future publisher will affix a life of the compiler.
.... Gratitude is regarded as a precious virtue, because tendered as a fair equivalent for any conceivable service.
.... A bad marriage is like an electric machine: it makes you dance, but you can’t let go.
.... The symbol of Charity should be a circle. It usually ends exactly where it begins—at home.
.... Most people redeem a promise as an angler takes in a trout; by first playing it with a good deal of line.
.... It is a grave mistake to suppose defaulters have no consciences. Some of them have been known, under favourable circumstances, to restore as much as ten per cent. of their plunder.
.... There is nothing so progressive as grief, and nothing so infectious as progress. I have seen an acre of cemetery infected by a single innovation in spelling cut upon a tombstone.
.... It is wicked to cheat on Sunday. The law recognises this truth, and shuts up the shops.
.... In the infancy of our language to be “foolish” signified to be affectionate; to be “fond” was to be silly. We have altered that now: to be “foolish” is to be silly, to be “fond” is to be affectionate. But that the change could ever have been made is significant.