I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.

What a pity if we do not live this short time according to the laws of the long time,--the eternal laws!

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

The condition-of-England question is a practical one. The condition of England demands a hero, not a poet.

This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction.

How full of the creative genius is the air in which these [snowflakes] are generated! I should hardly admire them more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat. Nature is full of genius. Full of the divinity. So that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.