The highest condition of art is artlessness.

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. Often the poor man is not cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune.

For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?

The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but an habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance.

The heart is forever inexperienced.

Why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse?

Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit.