All birds during the pairing season become more or less sentimental, and murmur soft nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding-organ repetition and loudness of their habitual song. The crow is very comical as a lover; and to hear him trying to soften his croak to the proper Saint-Preux standard has something the effect of a Mississippi boatman quoting Tennyson.

No man, I suspect, ever lived long in the country without being bitten by these meteorological ambitions. He likes to be hotter and colder, to have been more deeply snowed up, to have more trees and larger blown down than his neighbors.

Light is the symbol of truth.

As one lamp lights another, nor grows less,So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.

They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin.

For men in earnest have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth.

A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.