However, our fates at least are social. Our courses do not diverge; but as the web of destiny is woven it is fulled, and we are cast more and more into the centre. Men naturally, though feebly, seek this alliance, and their actions faintly foretell it.

Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

I had but three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship; three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up.

I find it, as ever, very unprofitable to have much to do with men. It is sowing the wind, but not reaping even the whirlwind; onlyreaping an unprofitable calm and stagnation. Our conversation is a smooth, and civil, and never-ending speculation merely.

To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?

The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor