Trees are your best antiques
It is the sternest philosophy, but on the whole the truest, that, in the wide arena of the world, failure and success are not accidents, as we so frequently suppose, but the strictest justice.
Books are a finer world within the world. (1863)
Stirling, like a huge brooch, clasps Highlands and Lowlands together.
A single soul is richer than all the worlds.
Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural.