If to chaffer and higgle are bad in trade, they are much worse in Love. It demands directness as of an arrow.

If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven.

Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply; for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is, in fact, a subtle detraction.

Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day,--not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an inhabited house,--and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them.

Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster, both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very late, he honestly slumbered a fool's allowance.

Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.