Commerce is the agency by which the power of choice is obtained.

Every noble life leaves the fibre of it interwoven forever in the work of the world.

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.

The history of humanity is not the history of its wars, but the history of its households.

In my house there is no attempt whatever to secure harmonies of colour, or form, or furniture.... I am entirely independent for daily happiness upon the sensual qualities of form or colour-when I want them I take them either from the sky or from the fields.

Not without design does God write the music of our lives.

The enormous influence of novelty--the way in which it quickens observations, sharpens sensations, and exalts sentiment--is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. And yet, if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become monotonous.