Nathaniel Hawthorne

Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.

Secrecy is the chastity of friendship.

Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff - it is a palliative rather than a remedy.