The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree's, so copious and so delicious to both sight and scent.

But it is rather derogatory that your dwelling-place should be only a neighborhood to a great city,--to live on an inclined plane.I do not like their cities and forts, with their morning and evening guns, and sails flapping in one's eye. I want a whole continent to breathe in, and a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street cannot buy,--nor Broadway with its wooden pavement. I must live along the beach, on the southern shore, which looks directly out to sea,--and see what that great parade of water means, that dashes and roars, and has not yet wet me, as long as I have lived.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music.

All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.

Homer and Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.