A man can bear a world's contempt when he has that within which says he's worthy. When he contemns himself, there burns the hell.

My garden, with its silence and pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.

Men praise poverty, as the African worships Mumbo Jumbo--from terror of the malign power, and a desire to propitiate at.

Eternity doth wear upon her face the veil of time. They only see the veil, and thus they know not what they stand so near!

Your death and my death are mainly of importance to ourselves. The black plumes will be stripped off our hearses within the hour; tears will dry, hurt hearts close again, our graves grow level with the church-yard, and although we are away, the world wags on. It does not miss us; and those who are near us, when the first strangeness of vacancy wears off, will not miss us much either.

In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October, when the trees are bare to the mild heavens, and the red leaves bestrew the road, and you can feel the breath of winter, morning and evening - no days so calm, so tenderly solemn, and with such a reverent meekness in the air.

The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.