I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.

There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill.

Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance.

Biography, too, is liable to the same objection; it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be?

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

Music never stops; it is only the listening that is intermittent.

How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden; all world-ridden.