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.

No mirror keeps its glances.

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

A child is beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it further back -- it is already so far.

The traveling heart went free / With endless streams; that strife was stopped; / And down a thousand vales I dropped, / I flowed to Italy.

Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at random. There is a tide in the affairs of children. Civilization is cruel in sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of dusk.

Childhood is but change made gay and visible.