How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

The only sin in the world is ignorance.

Somehow strangely the vice of men gets well represented and protected but their virtue has none to plead its cause - nor any charter of immunities and rights.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

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

Bread may not always nourish us; but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy.

Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another.