the feet should have more of the acquaintance of earth, and know more of flowers, freshness, cool brooks, wild thyme, and salt sand than does anything else about us. ... It is only the entirely unshod that have lively feet.

Childhood is but change made gay and visible.

No mirror keeps its glances.

Tender, too, is the silence of human feet. You have but to pass a season amongst the barefooted to find that man, who, shod, makes so much ado, is naturally as silent as snow.

If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical.

Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results; we value it in the act.

A wall is the safeguard of simplicity.