The quote database

The secret of calm cheerfulness is kindliness; no person can be consistently cheerful and calm who does not consistently think kind thoughts.

There are darknesses in life, and there are lights; you are one of the lights.

To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company.

a real kindness is so far beyond all compliment, that it never appears more than when there is least of t'other mingled with it

All letters, methinks, should be free and easy as one's discourse; not studied as an oration, nor made up of hard words like a charm.

we never could differ about the worth and comfort of domestic affection

Husband, lover, nurse--not one of these, has Robert been to me, but all three together.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life—to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?

We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen who leaves his home, his neighborhood and town better than he found it.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!

Tell all my friends in Concord that I do not send my love, but retain it still.

The friend, however, took her in, and the friend's husband was obliged to sleep upon a bench in the park every night for a week, which he did uncomplainingly if not cheerfully.

In final account, then, not only does social life demand teaching and learning for its own permanence, but the very process of living together educates.

Your friend is your needs answered.

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.

I don’t know that she is as amusing as she was when she was a child, but she makes me love her and I like people who make me love them. It saves me so much trouble in making myself love them.

To lament the death of a friend is both natural and just; a sigh or a tear I would allow to his memory: but no profuse or obstinate sorrow.

Of Severus, my brother, I learned to love my kinsmen, to love truth, to love justice.

In the face of a true friend a man sees as it were a second self.

Now friendship may be thus defined: a complete accord on all subjects human and divine, joined with mutual goodwill and affection.

In such cases friendships should be allowed to die out gradually by an intermission of intercourse.

it is in regard to friendship, as in so many other things, so supple and sensitive that it expands, so to speak, at a friend's good fortune, contracts at his misfortunes

Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.