Happiness is a kind of gratitude and vice versa.

Every time a value is born, existence takes on a new meaning; every time one dies, some part of that meaning passes away.

Man is the only one in whom the instinct of life falters long enough to enable it to ask the question "Why?

When, in the present world, men behave well, that is no doubt sometimes because they are creatures of habit as well as, sometimes, because they are reasonable.

The flowers never waste their sweetness on the desert air or, for that matter, on the jungle air. In fact, they waste it only when nobody except a human being is there to smell it. It is for the bugs and a few birds, not for men, that they dye their petals or waft their scents.

Is it wholly fantastic to admit the possibility that Nature herself strove toward what we call beauty? Face to face with any one of the elaborate flowers which man's cultivation has had nothing to do with, it does not seem fantastic to me. We put survival first. But when we have a margin of safety left over, we expend it in the search for the beautiful. Who can say that Nature does not do the same?

The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.