What wisdom, what warning can prevail against gladness? There is no law so strong that a little gladness may not transgress.
What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?
I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
My life is like a stroll upon the beach.
I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak.
The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.
The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.
Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray.
I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.
Heaven might be defined as the place which men avoid.
Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.
The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor.
It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.
How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.
What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!
Friends will not only live in harmony, but in melody.
How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character?
Even the best things are not equal to their fame.
In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident.
A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water. But, should we not pity him?