Our dependence outweighs our independence, for we are independent only in our desire, while we are dependent on our health, on nature, on society, on everything in us and outside us.

A modest garden contains, for those who know how to look and to wait, more instruction than a library.

The germs of all things are in every heart, and the greatest criminals as well as the greatest heroes are but different modes of ourselves.

I have never felt any inward assurance of genius, or any presentiment of glory or of happiness. I have never seen myself in imagination great or famous, or even a husband, a father, an influential citizen. This indifference to the future, this absolute self-distrust, are, no doubt, to be taken as signs. What dreams I have are all vague and indefinite; I ought not to live, for I am now scarcely capable of living.

Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.

As it is impossible to be outside God, the best is consciously to dwell in Him.

I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.