There are natures that go to the streams of life in great cities as the hart goes to the water brooks.

Avowed work, even when uncongenial, is far less trying to patience than feigned pleasure.

What delights us in the spring is more a sensation than an appearance, more a hope than any visible reality. There is something in the softness of the air, in the lengthening of the days, in the very sounds and odors of the sweet time, that caresses us and consoles us after the rigorous weeks of winter.

I wonder how it is that so cheerful-looking a tree as the willow should ever have become associated with ideas of sadness.

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author?

You may have a cat in the room with you without anxiety about anything except eatables. The presence of a cat is positively soothing to a student.

The art of reading is to skip judiciously. Whole libraries may be skipped in these days, when we have the results of them in our modern culture without going over the ground again.