Nature's deepest laws, her only true laws, are her invisible ones.

You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be.

If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself, about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself out of everything God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose.

Cheerfulness is full of significance: it suggests good health, a clear conscience, and a soul at peace with all human nature.

Feelings are like chemicals, the more you analyze them the worse they smell.

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.

I can conceive few human states more enviable than that of the man to whom, panting in the foul laboratory, or watching for his life under the tropic forest, Isis shall for a moment lift her sacred veil, and show him, once and for ever, the thing he dreamed not of; some law, or even mere hint of a law, explaining one fact; but explaining with it a thousand more, connecting them all with each other and with the mighty whole, till order and meaning shoots through some old Chaos of scattered observations.