A lover’s hope resembles the bean in the nursery tale—let it once take root, and it will grow so rapidly, that in the course of a few hours the giant Imagination builds a castle on the top and by and by comes Disappointment with “curtal axe,” and hews down both the plant and the superstructure. The falsehood of a common assertion, that the greatest human happiness consists in hope.

Sin is an alien element in our blood. Tis the Apple-Disease with which Nature has striven since Adam. To treat Youth as naturally sinful, is, therefore, false, and bad; as it is bad; as it is bad, false, to esteem it radically pure. We must consider that we have forfeited Paradise, but were yet grown there. The triumph of man’s intellect, the proof of his power, is to make the serpent, who inhabits us fight against himself, till he is destroyed.

Gold and love, what are they? The great gods that rule us! Gold, God of the body with its lusts and its clay; Love, God of the heart with its fire and its passions. Young men of open, generous dispositions are naturally inclined to gallantry, which, if they have good understandings, exerts itself in an obliging complacent behavior to all women in general.

Good fortune opens the hand as well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when we have largely received, is but to afford a vent to the unusual ebullition of the sensations. When you and your brother are friendly, his doings are indifferent to you. When you have quarreled, all his outgoings and incomings you know, as if you were his spy.

Years are the teachers of the great rocky natures, whom they round and sap and pierce in caverns, having them on all sides, and striking deep inward at moments. There is no resisting the years, if we have a heart and a common understanding. The experience of the World, being learned, cannot easily be forgotten.

College discipline should imitate the World in this respect: it should develop every man’s peculiar genius. Neglect of this is the true reason why so many people distinguish themselves in the World, who were considered lame in college, and why so many who were considered amazingly clever in college, are found to be little better than a mule in the World.

I have heard some talk about duty first and last; but it has always been of my duty to other people. I have wondered now and then whether no one ever owed any duty to me. Wine is a dangerous thing, and should not be made the exponent of truth, let the truth be good as it may; but it has the merit of forcing a man to show his true colors. A man who is a gentleman in his cups may be trusted to be a gentleman at all times.

This discourse [against drinking] caused quite an uproar. The hearers formed knots; the men were indignant; so the women flattered them, and took their part openly against the preacher. A married man had a right to drop; he required it, working for all the family. And for their part they did not care to change their men for milksops.

The double faces! That very evening, a band of men caught near a hundred of them round Brother Phillippe, filling his wallet with the best, and offering him the very roses off their heads, and kissing his frock, and blessing him for taking in hand to mend their sots.

They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything. An eye is like a cannon in this respect: It is not so much the eye or the canon, in themselves, as it is the carriage of the eye—and the carriage of the cannon, by which both the one and the other are enabled to do so much execution.

Gazing into the depths your blue eyes, when you were in a contemplative mood, they seemed most placid, yet unfathomable; but when illuminated by some lively emotion, they beamed upon a beholder like stars. Should the eye be disgusted when the heart is to be engaged?