Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic.

The question is not what you look at – but how you look & whether you see.

Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds.

One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they make their port. The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plow out again through the side of his head.

There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science can never span.

Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be.

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.