The days are cold, the nights are long, The North wind sings a doleful song; Then hush again upon my breast; All merry things are now at rest, Save thee, my pretty love!

An injudicious and malignant enemy often serves the cause he means to injure; but a feeble friend never attains that end.

I found a strawberry blossom in a rock. I uprooted it rashly and felt as if I had been committing an outrage, so I planted it again.

When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the waterside. But as we went along there were more and yet more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a county turnpike toad. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew about the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake.

Scotland is the country above all others that I have seen, in which a man of imagination may carve out his own pleasures; there are so many inhabited solitudes.

The columbine ... is a graceful slender creature, a female seeking retirement, and growing freest and most graceful where it is most alone. I observed that the more shaded plants were always the tallest.

The days are cold, the nights are long, The North wind sings a doleful song; Then hush again upon my breast; All merry things are now at rest, Save thee, my pretty love!