Love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper-societies are yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody.

Go out of the house to see the moon, and't is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey.

Some men at the approach of a dispute neigh like horses. Unless there be an argument, they think nothing is doing. Some talkers excel in the precision with which they formulate their thoughts, so that you get from them somewhat to remember; others lay criticism asleep by a charm. Especially women use words that are not words,--as steps in a dance are not steps,--but reproduce the genius of that they speak of; as the sound of some bells makes us think of the bell merely, whilst the church chimes in the distance bring the church and its serious memories before us.

The great man, that is, the man most imbued with the spirit of the time, is the impressionable man.

Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.

Wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, some step omitted, which, Nature never pardons.

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.