A man does not plant a tree for himself; he plants it for posterity.

In my garden, care stops at the gate and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.

One never hugs one's good luck so affectionately as when listening to the relation of some horrible misfortunes which has overtaken others.

Every day travels toward death; the last only arrives at it.

A thought may be very commendable as a thought, but I value it chiefly as a window through which I can obtain insight on the thinker.

The only thing a man knows is himself.

Men and women make their own beauty or their own ugliness. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton speaks in one of his novels of a man "who was uglier than he had any business to be;" and, if we could but read it, every human being carries his life in his face, and is good-looking or the reverse as that life has been good or evil. On our features the fine chisels of thought and emotion are eternally at work.