And when she was good she was very very good. But when she was bad she was horrid.

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books.

Some critics are like chimney-sweepers; they put out the fire below, and frighten the swallows from their nests above; they scrape a long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing from the top of the house as if they had built it.

Art is the child of Nature.

The highest exercise of imagination is not to devise what has no existence, but rather to perceive what really exists, though unseen by the outward eye-not creation, but insight.

Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, has earned a night's repose.

In old age our bodies are worn-out instruments, on which the soul tries in vain to play the melodies of youth. But because the instrument has lost its strings, or is out of tune, it does not follow that the musician has lost his skill.