The cloud controls the light ... It is the cloud that, holding the sun's rays in a sheaf as a giant holds a handful of spears, strikes the horizon, touches the extreme edge with a delicate revelation of light, or suddenly puts it out and makes the foreground shine.

Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers, / Floats in the mist, a little cloud at tether.

Assuredly it would be a pity if laughter should ever become, like rhetoric and the arts, a habit.

Terrestrial scenery is much, but it is not all. Men go in search of it; but the celestial scenery journeys to them; it goes its way round the world. It has no nation, it costs no wearinesss, it knows no bonds.

Children have a fastidiousness that time is slow to cure. It is to be wondered, for example, whether if the elderly were half as hungry as children are they would yet find so many things at table to be detestable.

We talk of sunshine and moonshine, but not of cloud-shine, which is yet one of the illuminations of our skies. A shining cloud is one of the most majestic of all secondary lights.

O spring, I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise / In the young children's eyes. / But I have learnt the years, and know the yet / Leaf-folded violet.