It is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.

Our sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take the place of dilettanteism [sic] and make us feel that the quality of our action is not a matter of indifference.

A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs and small notions; about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest.

Can any man or woman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace or their father and mother.

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

It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings. It refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks.

We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement.