Many college text-books, which were a weariness and stumbling-block when I studied, I have since read a little with pleasure and profit.

A true politeness does not result from any hasty and artificial polishing, it is true, but grows naturally in characters of the right grain and quality, through a long fronting of men and events, and rubbing on good and bad fortune.

We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire.

Every sentence is the result of a long probation.

Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.