We are overhasty to speak as if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and make his love felt through ours.

All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women and children -- in our gardens and in our houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion but in the secret of deep human sympathy.

Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity.

'Character," says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms - character is destiny'.

My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

Joy and sorrow are both my perpetual companions, but the joy is called Past and the sorrow Present.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.