Children can scarcely be fashioned to meet with our likes and our purpose. Just as God did us give them, so must we hold them and love them, nurture and teach them to fullness and leave them to be what they are.

A good man, through obscurest aspirations Has still an instinct of the one true way.

If you miss the first buttonhole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.

As all Nature's thousands changes But one changeless God proclaim; So in Art's wide kingdom ranges One sole meaning still the same: This is Truth, eternal Reason, Which from Beauty takes its dress, And serene through time and season Stands aye in loveliness.

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

How many years must a man do nothing, before he can at all know what is to be done and how to do it!

What a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it!