“I often long to see her, that I often think of her with gratitude and affection, and that the longer I live the deeper do I value her early love and care.”

A plain expression of lasting filial gratitude · Letter to his mother

• Family
• Gratitude
• Memory

“Nothing is more commonplace, either in prose or poetry, than for those who live in the bustle of the world to wish for some quiet little retreat in a lonely wild, where, free from cares... at the same time that, if the truth was known, they had rather die than give up their darling turmoil.”

Observing the gap between fashionable longing for solitude and actual attachment to busy life · Letter to his mother

• Self Knowledge
• Society
• Solitude