Some men so dislike the dust kicked up by the generation they belong to, that, being unable to pass, they lag behind it.

The thoughtful excitement of lonely rambles, of gardening, and of other like occupations, where the mind has leisure to must during the healthful activity of the body, with the fresh and wakeful breezes blowing round it.

In a mist the heights can for the most part see each other; but the valleys cannot.

The ablest writer is only a gardener first, and then a cook: his tasks are, carefully to select and cultivate his strongest and most nutritive thoughts; and when they are ripe, to dress them, wholesomely, and yet so that they may have a relish.

Much of this world's wisdom is still acquired by necromancy,--by consulting the oracular dead.

How idle it is to call certain things God-sends! as if there was anything else in the world.

The poet sees things as they look. Is this having a faculty the less? or a sense the more?