The knowledge beyond all other knowledge is the knowledge how to excuse.

Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

It is our relation to circumstances that determine their influence over us. The same wind that blows one ship into port may blow another off shore.

We give our best affections to the beautiful, only our second best to the useful.

Motives are better than actions. Men drift into crime. Of evil they do more than they contemplate, and of good they contemplate more than they do.

Genuine religion is matter of feeling rather than matter of opinion.

To cultivate a garden is. . . to go hand in hand with Nature in some of her most beautiful processes.