Always do what you are afraid to do.

Tragedy is in the eye of the observer, and not in the heart of the sufferer.

Cannot we let [children] be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make another you. One's enough.

Live in the fields, and God will give you lectures on natural philosophy every day.

There are men too superior to be seen except by a few, as there are notes too high for the scale of most ears.

In our Mechanics' Fair, there must be not only bridges, ploughs, carpenter's planes, and baking troughs, but also some few finer instruments,--rain-gauges, thermometers, and telescopes; and in society, besides farmers, sailors, and weavers, there must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting instinct, who note the smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the bystander.

I pay the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys that educate my son.