Leaves die, but trees do not. They only undress.

Many men are mere warehouses full of merchandise--the head, the heart, are stuffed with goods. . . . There are apartments in their souls which were once tenanted by taste, and love, and joy, and worship, but they are all deserted now, and the rooms are filled with earthy and material things.

A republican government in a hundred points is weaker than an autocratic government; but in this one point it is the strongest that ever existed — it has educated a race of men that are men.

No cradle for an emperor's child was ever prepared with so much magnificence as this world has been made for man. But it is only his cradle.

Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety,--all this rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it runs.

I pray on the principle that wine knocks the cork out of a bottle. There is an inward fermentation, and there must be a vent.

As for marigolds, poppies, hollyhocks, and valorous sunflowers, we shall never have a garden without them, both for their own sake, and for the sake of old-fashioned folks, who used to love them.