“we know nothing of tomorrow, our business is to be good and happy today”

“Mankind are always happy for having happiness. So if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years from now by the memory of it. ”

“Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence. ”

“When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one for a fellow creature.”

“The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing.”

“I am glad you like what I said of Mrs. Elizabeth Fry (prison and mental hospital reformer). She is very unpopular with the clergy; examples of living, active virtue disturb our repose and give one to distressing comparisons; we long to burn her alive.”

“The fact is that in order to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.”