At the bottom of every leaf-stem is a cradle, and in it is an infant germ; the winds will rock it, the birds will sing to it all summer long, but the next season it will unfold and go alone.

Good nature is often a mere matter of health.

Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it.

A gamester, as such, is the cool, calculating, essential spirit of concentrated, avaricious selfishness.

If a man can have only one kind of sense, let him have common sense. If he has that and uncommon sense too, he is not far from genius.

Of all the music that reached farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart.

The first merit of pictures is the effect which they can produce upon the mind; — and the first step of a sensible man should be to receive involuntary effects from them. Pleasure and inspiration first, analysis afterward.