Our vices always lie in the direction of our virtues, and in their best estate are but plausible imitations of the latter.

I did not know that we had ever quarreled.

Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.

We live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.

I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Trees indeed have hearts.