Most creatures have a vague belief that a very precarious hazard, a kind of transparent membrane, divides death from love; and that the profound idea of nature demands that the giver of life should die at the moment of giving.

Many a happiness in life, a many a disaster, is due to chance alone; but the peace within us can never be governed by chance.

Each man has to seek out his own special aptitude for a higher life in the midst of the humble and inevitable reality of daily existence. Than this, there can be no nobler aim in life.

Brave old-flowers! Wall-flowers, Gilly flowers, Stocks! For even as the field-flowers, from which a trifle, a ray of beauty, a drop of perfume, divides them, they have charming names, the softest in the language; and each of them, like tiny, art-less ex-votos, or like medals bestowed by the gratitude of men, proudly bears three or four.

Happiness is rarely absent; it is we that know not of its presence.

Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention.

At every crossroad on the way that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past.