It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.

Our destiny often looks like a fruit-tree in winter. Who would think from its pitiable aspect that those rigid boughs, those rough twigs could next spring again be green, bloom, and even bear fruit? Yet we hope it, we know it.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

One says a lot in vain, refusing; The other mainly hears the "No."

The older I get the more I trust in the law according to which the rose and the lily bloom.

The world is so great and rich, and life so full of variety, that you can never lack occasions for poems.

Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done.