There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

Only he who finds empiricism irksome is driven to method.

If you live criticizing people, you won't have time to love them.

To be sure, we have inherited abilities, but our development we owe to thousands of influences coming from the world around us from which we appropriate what we can and what is suitable to us.

All of us have life; few of us have an idea of it.

We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.

As for solitude, I cannot understand how certain people seek to lay claim to intellectual stature, nobility of soul and strength of character, yet have not the slightest feeling for seclusion; for solitude, I maintain, when joined with a quiet contemplation of nature, a serene and conscious faith in creation and the Creator, and a few vexations from outside is the only school for a mind of lofty endowment.