To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the old year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently and calmly away.

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

Drink with me, my dear, said Mr. Weller. "Put your lips to this here tumbler, and then I can kiss you by deputy."

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.