Most long lives resemble those threads of gossamer, the nearest approach to nothing unmeaningly prolonged, scarce visible pathways of some worm from his cradle to his grave.

And the poorest twig on the elm-tree was ridged inch deep with pearl.

Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, and cries reproachful: Was it then my praise, and not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth; I claim of thee the promise of thy youth.

Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.

There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to understand it; the second understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told.

A friendship counting nearly forty years is the finest kind of shade-tree I know.

To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.