How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth make poetry for a mind that had no movements of awe and tenderness, no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant to the near?

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish; but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief — a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you.

A proud heart and a lofty mountain are never fruitful.

But let the wise be warned against too great readiness to explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.

History, we know, is apt to repeat itself.

I think cheerfulness is a fortune in itself.

The thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never precisely in the way we have imagined to ourselves.