Travelling is like a novel: it's what happens that counts.

Some say that cats are devils, but they behave badly only when they are alone. When they are among us cats are angels.

I needn't tell you that success and failure prove nothing - the whole thing is a lottery. It's pleasant to succeed; but for a philosophic mind it oughtn't to be very upsetting to fail.

nature has not changed. The night is still unsullied, the stars still twinkle, and the wild thyme smells as sweetly now as it did then ... We may be afflicted and unhappy, but no one can take from us the sweet delight which is nature's gift to those who love her and her poetry.

[Failure is hard initially because] One knows what one has lost, but not what one may find [and learn from that failure]!

... what is there over which the incomparable beauty of childhood would not triumph?

He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.