The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.

All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity.

Yet we must try the harder, the less the prospect of success.

As I love nature, as I love singing birds...I love thee, my friend.

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

Be assured that every man's success is in proportion to his average ability. The meadow flowers spring and bloom where the watersannually deposit their slime, not where they reach in some freshet only. A man is not his hope, nor his despair, nor yet his past deed. We know not yet what we have done, still less what we are doing. Wait till evening, and other parts of our day's work will shine than we had thought at noon, and we shall discover the real purport of our toil. As when the farmer has reached the end of the furrow and looks back, he can tell best where the pressed earth shines most.

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such.