The artist may be well advised to keep his work to himself till it is completed, because no one can readily help him or advise him with it... but the scientist is wiser not to withhold a single finding or a single conjecture from publicity.

To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.

Flowers are the beautiful hieroglyphics of nature with which she indicates how much she loves us.

At bottom, no real object is unpoetical, if the poet knows how to use it properly.

One needs only to get old to become milder; I don't see anyone make a mistake I hadn't also made.

It is a maxim of wise government to treat people not as they should be but as they actually are.

Nature! We live in her midst and know her not. She is incessantly speaking to us, but betrays not her secret. We constantly act upon her, and yet have no power over her. Variant: NATURE! We are surrounded and embraced by her: powerless to separate ourselves from her, and powerless to penetrate beyond her.