We need to suffer, that we may learn to pity.

That which is always within our reach, is always the last thing we take; and the chances are, that what we can do every day, we never do at all.

I cannot love evergreens - they are the misanthropes of nature. To them the spring brings no promise, the autumn no decline; they are cut off from the sweetest of all ties with their kind - sympathy. ... I will have no evergreens in my garden; when the inevitable winter comes, every beloved plant and favorite tree shall drop together - no solitary fir left to triumph over the companionship of decay.

Oh, only those whose souls have felt this one idolatry can tell how precious is the slightest thing affection gives and hallows.

Nothing is so fortunate for mankind as its diversity of opinion.

Strange the affection which clings to inanimate objects - objects which cannot even know our love! But it is not return that constitutes the strength of an attachment.

Ignorance, far more than idleness, is the mother of all the vices; and how recent has been the admission, that knowledge should be the portion of all? The destinies of the future lie in judicious education; an education that must be universal, to be beneficial.