“When true friends meet in adverse hour; 'Tis like a sunbeam through a shower. A watery way an instant seen, The darkly closing clouds between.”

“One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honour or observation.”

“To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life, Is worth an age without a name.”

“There are few men who do not look back in secret to some period of their youth, at which a sincere and early affection was repulsed, or betrayed, or became abortive through opposing circumstances. It is these little passages of secret history, which leave a tinge of romance in every bosom, scarce permitting us, even in the most busy or advanced period of life, to listen with total indifference to a tale of true love.”

“The autumn winds rushingWaft the leaves that are searest,But our flower was in flushing,When blighting was nearest.Fleet foot on the correi,Sage counsel in cumber,Red hand in the foray,How sound is thy slumber!Like the dew on the mountain,Like the foam on the river,Like the bubble on the fountain,Thou art gone, and for ever!”

“And please return it. You may think this a strange request, but I find that although my friends are poor arithmeticians, they are nearly all of them good bookkeepers.”

“Lucy Ashton, in short, was involved in those mazes of the imagination which are most dangerous to the young and the sensitive. Time, it is true, absence, change of place and of face, might probably have destroyed the illusion in her instance as it has done in many others.”