Avoid the necessity of a physician, if you can, by careful attention to your diet. Eat what best agrees with your system, and resolutely abstain from what hurts you, however well you may like it. A few days' abstinence, and cold water for a beverage, has driven off many an approaching disease.

Birds and beasts have in fact our own nature, flattened a semi-tone.

[U]sefulness is happiness, and... all other things are but incidental.

a great mind can attend to little things, but a little mind cannot attend to great things.

Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning.

The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos.

affectation is fond of making a greater show than reality. ... Nature and truth have never learned to blow the trumpet, and never will.