Sin writes histories, goodness is silent.

Nothing is more consonant with Nature than that she puts into operation in the smallest detail that which she intends as a whole.

Idea and experience will never coincide in the center; only through art and action are they united.

Every bird has its decoy, and every man is led and misled in his own peculiar way.

Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.

There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.

So then the year is repeating its old story again. We are come once more, thank God! to its most charming chapter. The violets and the Mayflowers are as its inscriptions or vignettes. It always makes a pleasant impression on us, when we open again at these pages of the book of life.