It is tranquil people who accomplish much.

After all, I believe it is the style of thought entirely, and the style of expression, which makes the difference in books.

We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.

Slow are the beginnings of philosophy.

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.

The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones.