Wisdom lies in taking everything with good humor and a grain of salt.

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

Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.

Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it must be justified at the bar of the individual conscience.

Sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually towards another, makes it one of the dearest employments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest pleasure, to rivalry the fiercest rage, and to solicitude an eternal melancholy. What more could be needed to suffuse the world with the deepest meaning and beauty?

The family is one of nature's masterpieces.

Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions.