Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another.

Since most of us spend our lives doing ordinary tasks, the most important thing is to carry them out extraordinarily well.

Bread may not always nourish us; but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy.

I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.