Live with your century; but do not be its creature.

Fate hath no voice but the heart's impulse.

If you cannot please everyone with your deeds and your art, please a few. To please many is bad.

A sublime soul can rise to all kinds of greatness, but by an effort; it can tear itself from all bondage, to all that limits and constrains it, but only by strength of will. Consequently the sublime soul is only free by broken efforts.

The zeal of friends it is that razes me, And not the hate of enemies.

Friends show me what I can do, foes teach me what I should do.

If the art of gardening is at last to turn back from her extravagances and rest with her other sisters, it is, above everything, necessary to have clearly before you what you require . . . It is certainly tasteless and inconsistent to desire to encompass the world with a garden-wall, but very practicable and reasonable to make a garden . . . into a characteristic whole to the eye, heart, and nderstanding alike.