All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story.

The walls that fence our fields, as well as modern Rome, and not less the Parthenon itself, are all built of ruins.

Real power is measured by how much you can let things be.

When a shadow flits across the landscape of the soul where is the substance?

If you indulge in long periods, you must be sure to have a snapper at the end.

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.

Very few men can speak of Nature, for instance, with any truth. They overstep her modesty, somehow or other, and confer no favor.They do not speak a good word for her. Most cry better than they speak, and you can get more nature out of them by pinching than by addressing them. The surliness with which the woodchopper speaks of his woods, handling them as indifferently as his axe, is better than the mealy-mouthed enthusiasm of the lover of nature. Better that the primrose by the river's brim be a yellow primrose, and nothing more, than that it be something less.