The virtue which we appreciate, we to some extent appropriate.

The world, which the Greeks called Beauty, has been made such by being gradually divested of every ornament which was not fitted to endure.

It is equally impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them answer to our ideal. When they say farewell, then indeed we beginto keep them company. How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual Friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.

Good deeds are no less good because their object is unworthy.

The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands.

Nature seemed to have adorned herself for our departure with a profusion of fringes and curls, mingled with the bright tints of flowers, reflected in the water. But we missed the white water-lily, which is the queen of river flowers, its reign being over for this season.... Many of this species inhabit our Concord water.

What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and sublimest truth?