Refinement is the lifting of one's self upwards from the merely sensual; the effort of the soul to etherealize the common wants and uses of life.

I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest who complained of bad luck.

The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.

Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.

There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world,--a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills. Men take one who has offended, and set him down before the blowpipe of their indignation, and scorch him, and burn his fault into him; and when they have kneaded him sufficiently with their fiery fists, then--they forgive him.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

True elegance becomes the more so as it approaches simplicity.