We are as happy as people can be, without making themselves ridiculous, and might be even happier; but, as a matter of taste, we choose to stop short at this point.

In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point.

Happiness is like a butterfly.

Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream

Cannot you conceive that another man may wish well to the world and struggle for its good on some other plan than precisely that which you have laid down?

It is a good lesson - though it may often be a hard one - for a man... to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.

The trees reflected in the river - they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we.