"There are two kinds of clocks. There is the clock that is always wrong, and that knows it is wrong, and glories in it; and there is the clock that is always right — except when you rely upon it, and then it is more wrong than you would think a clock could be in a civilized country."

"It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar."

"A boy's love comes from a full heart; a man's is more often the result of a full stomach. Indeed, a man's sluggish current may not be called love, compared with the rushing fountain that wells up when a boy's heart is struck with the heavenly rod. If you would taste love, drink of the pure stream that youth pours out at your feet. Do not wait till it has become a muddy river before you stoop to catch its waves."

"Foolish people—when I say "foolish people" in this contemptuous way I mean people who entertain different opinions to mine. If there is one person I do despise more than another, it is the man who does not think exactly the same on all topics as I do—foolish people, I say, then, who have never experienced much of either, will tell you that mental distress is far more agonizing than bodily. Romantic and touching theory! so comforting to the love-sick young sprig who looks down patronizingly at some poor devil with a white starved face and thinks to himself, "Ah, how happy you are compared with me!"—so soothing to fat old gentlemen who cackle about the superiority of poverty over riches. But it is all nonsense—all cant. An aching head soon makes one forget an aching heart. A broken finger will drive away all recollections of an empty chair. And when a man feels really hungry he does not feel anything else."

"Our trouble is sore indeed when you turn away and will not comfort us. How long the dawn seems coming when we cannot sleep! Oh! those hideous nights when we toss and turn in fever and pain, when we lie, like living men among the dead, staring out into the dark hours that drift so slowly between us and the light. And oh! those still more hideous nights when we sit by another in pain, when the low fire startles us every now and then with a falling cinder, and the tick of the clock seems a hammer beating out the life that we are watching."

"Ay, call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod; They have left unstained what there they found — Freedom to whorship God."

"What sought they thus afar? Bright jewels of the mine, The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? They sought a faith's pure shrine."

"Thou hast been round us, like a viewless spirit, Known only by the music on the air; The leaf or flowers which thou hast named inherit A beauty known but from thy breathing there: For thou didst on them fling thy strong emotion, The likeness from itself the fond heart gave; As planets from afar look down on ocean, And give their own sweet image to the wave."

"The breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast, And the woods against a stormy sky Their giant branches tossed."

"And the heavy night hung dark, The hills and waters o'er, When a band of exiles moored their bark On the wild New England shore."

"Oh, call my brother back to me! I cannot play alone: The summer comes with flower and bee,— Where is my brother gone?"

"The stately Homes of England, How beautiful they stand! Amidst their tall ancestral trees, O'er all the pleasant land."

"Leaves have their time to fall, And flowers to wither at the north-wind’s breath, And stars to set; but all, Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!"

"The boy stood on the burning deck, Whence all but him had fled; The flame that lit the battle's wreck Shone round him o'er the dead."

"The flames roll'd on-he would not go Without his father's word; That father, faint in death below, His voice no longer heard."

"Alas for love, if thou wert all, And naught beyond, O Earth!"

"Come to the sunset tree! The day is past and gone; The woodman’s axe lies free, And the reaper’s work is done."

"I have looked on the hills of the stormy North, And the larch has hung his tassels forth."

"But fair the exil'd Palm-tree grew Midst foliage of no kindred hue; Through the laburnum’s dropping gold Rose the light shaft of Orient mould, And Europe’s violets, faintly sweet, Purpled the mossbeds at its feet."

"They grew in beauty side by side, They filled one home with glee: Their graves are severed far and wide By mount and stream and sea."

"I had a hat. It was not all a hat,— Part of the brim was gone: Yet still I wore it on."

"In the busy haunts of men."

"thumb|Signature of Felicia HemansCalm on the bosom of thy God, Fair spirit, rest thee now!"

"The temptation to neglect good ordinary writers, and thereby to exaggerate the importance of the unusual, is one that, even in the moment of deploring it, is hardly to be resisted. Mr. Walpole happens to be a popular as well as a good writer. A conscientious craftsman, he has produced book after book, every one of which has been in some degree robust, charming, and eminently sensible. His work exhibits, moreover, surprising versatility."

"The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a glowing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing, it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of Divine accident."

"Of the general soundness of Mr. Walpole's work I am firmly convinced. He is distinctly a man of his time. We see him grappling with the truth of things spiritual and material with his usual earnestness, and we can discern the characteristics of this acute and sympathetic explorer of human nature."

"I am asking you again to marry me as I did a fortnight ago."

"Over this country, when the giant Eagle flings the shadow of his wing, the land is darkened. So compact is it that the wing covers all its extent in one pause of the flight. The sea breaks on the pale line of the shore; to the Eagle's proud glance waves run in to the foot of the hills that are like rocks planted in green water."

"The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and a thousand other things as well."

"Henry James and John Buchan praised him. Joseph Conrad, T S Eliot and Virginia Woolf were kind about him. What's more, his books sold enormously well on both sides of the Atlantic, he was knighted, and he became very rich ... Yet now he has vanished completely, his books not even to be found on the back shelves of most second hand shops, dismissed as "unreadable"."

"Tisn't life that matters! 'Tis the courage you bring to it."

"Don't play for safety. It's the most dangerous thing in the world."

"He [Walpole] has done more than any man alive to make modern English writers, some of them struggling, some active and unsparing rivals of his own, familiar to a wider public, both in the United States and in England."

"Mr Walpole’s gift is neither for passion nor for satire, but he possesses an urbane observant humour. He has a true insight into the nature of domesticity...These are the small things in which Mr Walpole is invariably happy, and in our view it is no disparagement to a writer to say that his gift is for the small things rather than for the large."

"Youth is ever apt to judge in haste, And lose the medium in the wild extreme, Do not repent, but regulate your passion: Though love is reason, its excess is rage. Give me, at least, your promise to reflect, In cool, impartial solitude, and still. No last decision till we meet again."

"Reason gains all men, by compelling none. Mercy was always Heaven's distinguished mark: And he, who bears it not, has no friend there."

"Can my fond heart, on such a feeble proof, Embrace a faith, abhorred by him I love? I see too plainly custom forms us all; Our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed belief, Are consequences of our place of birth: Born beyond Ganges, I had been a Pagan; In France, a Christian; I am here a Saracen: 'Tis but instruction, all! Our parents' hand Writes on our heart the first faint characters, Which time, re-tracing, deepens into strength, That nothing can efface, but death or Heaven."

"First, then, a woman will or won’t, depend on ’t; If she will do ’t, she will; and there ’s an end on ’t. But if she won’t, since safe and sound your trust is, Fear is affront, and jealousy injustice."

"But me no buts."

"Courage is poorly housed that dwells in numbers; the lion never counts the herd that are about him, nor weighs how many flocks he has to scatter."

"Tender-handed stroke a nettle, And it stings you for your pains; Grasp it like a man of mettle, And it soft as silk remains.’Tis the same with common natures: Use ’em kindly, they rebel; But be rough as nutmeg-graters, And the rogues obey you well."

"Yours is the guilt of all, who, judging wrong, Mistake tuned nonsense for the poet's song! Provoking dulness!—what a soul has he Who fancies rhyme, and measure, poetry!— He thinks, profanely, that this generous art Stops at the ear—with power to shake the heart."

"O'er Nature's laws, God cast the veil of night, Out blaz'd a Newton's soul — and all was light."

"You talk no more of that gay nation now, Where men adore their wives, and woman's power Draws reverence from a polished people's softness, Their husbands' equals, and their lovers' queens; Free without scandal; wise without restraint; Their virtue due to nature, not to fear."

"Joys, which we do not know, we do not wish."

"Within one of her."

"Losers must have leave to speak."

"A weak invention of the enemy."

"Stolen sweets are best."

"The will for the deed."