Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.

In each person I catch the fleeting suggestion of something beautiful and swear eternal friendship with that.

One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.

Gnomic wisdom, however, is notoriously polychrome, and proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to. Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

It is right to prefer our own country to all others, because we are children and citizens before we can be travellers or philosophers.

Nature is like a beautiful woman that may be as delightfully and as truly known at a certain distance as upon a closer view; as to knowing her through and through; that is nonsense in both cases, and might not reward our pains.

It is characteristic of spontaneous friendship to take on first, without enquiry and almost at first sight, the unseen doings and unspoken sentiments of our friends; the parts known give us evidence enough that the unknown parts cannot be much amiss.