Thinking is creating with God, as thinking is writing with the ready writer; and worlds are only leaves turned over in the process of composition, about his throne.

Whoever makes home seem to the young dearer and more happy, is a public benefactor.

When a man's pride is subdued it's like the sides of Mount Aetna. It was terrible during the eruption, but when that is over and the lava is turned into soil, there are vineyards and olive trees which grow up to the top.

Poverty is very good in poems but very bad in the house; very good in maxims and sermons but very bad in practical life.

It gives one a sudden start in going down a barren, stoney street, to see upon a narrow strip of grass, just within the iron fence, the radiant dandelion, shining in the grass, like a spark dropped from the sun.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.

Some people are so dry that you might soak them in a joke for a month and it would not get through their skins.