Pure motives do not insure perfect results.

Fortune, like a coy mistress, loves to yield her favors, though she makes us wrest them from her.

In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.

The trouble with men of sense is that they are so dreadfully in earnest all the while.

To cultivate a garden is. . . to go hand in hand with Nature in some of her most beautiful processes, to learn something of her choicest secrets, and to have a more intelligent interest awakened in the beautiful order of her works elsewhere.

The extent of poverty in the world is much exaggerated. Our sensitiveness makes half our poverty; our fears--anxieties for ills that never happen--a greater part of the other half.

We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature hath set none.