I lingered most about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the house.

Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he would haveheld up his head in their company.

A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it, than by the woods and swamps that surround it.

We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is said that knowledge is power, and the like. Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge.

The scenery when it is truly seen reacts on the life of the seer.