There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible…

"The world," he resumed after a short pause, "has no faith in any man's conversion; it never forgets what he was, it never believes him anything better, it is an inexorable and stupid judge."

There is no dealing with great sorrow as if it were under the control of our wills. It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it.

How marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so long – the care of cares – the only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heaven – …

I look'd far back into the past, and lo! in bright array, I saw, as in a dream, the forms of ages pass'd away. It was a stately convent, with its old and lofty walls, And gardens with their broad green walks, where soft the footstep falls.

On the morning of January 11th, 1860, I passed, for the eighth time, through the Golden Gate... As the shores of California faded in the distance, and the summits of the Coast Range sank under the blue horizon, I bade farewell — yes, I do …

Tho’ sickness yet a while forbears, Yet time destroys what sickness spares; Now Helen lives alone in fame And Cleopatra's but a name; Time must indent that heav'nly brow, And thou must be what they are now.