It is at the approach of extreme danger when a hollow puppet can accomplish nothing, that power falls into the mighty hands of nature, of the spirit giant-born, who listens only to himself, and knows nothing of compacts.

Many a smiling face hides a mourning heart; but grief alone teaches us what we are.

If you would attain to your highest, go look upon a flower;what the flower does willessly, that do willingly.

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

The world's history is constant, like the laws of nature, and simple, like the souls of men. The same conditions continually produce the same results.

Regarded in isolation, an idea may be quite insignificant, and venturesome in the extreme, but it may acquire importance from an idea which follows it; perhaps, in a certain collocation with other ideas, which may seem equally absurd, it may be capable of furnishing a very serviceable link.

The great happiness of life, I find, after all, to consist in the regular discharge of some mechanical duty.