Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure.

The tenure of a literary reputation is the most uncertain and fluctuating of all.

The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value

We are half ruined by conformity, but we should be wholly ruined without it.

A garden is an awful responsibility. You never know what you may be aiding to grow in it.

Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipations. It is not much matter if things do not turn out well.

Nature is, in fact, a suggester of uneasiness, a promoter of pilgrimages and of excursions of the fancy which never come to any satisfactory haven.