Society will be obeyed; if you refuse obedience, you must take the consequences. Society has only one law, and that is custom. Even religion itself is socially powerful only just so far as it has custom on its side.

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

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.

Society is, and must be, based upon appearances, and not upon the deepest appearances, and not realities.

We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest.

High culture always isolates, always drives men out of their class, and makes it more difficult for them to share naturally and easily the common class-life around them. They seek the few companions who can understand them, and when these are not to be had within a traversable distance, they sit and work alone.

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.