Of course you will insist on modesty in the children, and respect to their teachers, but if the boy stops you in your speech, cries out that you are wrong and sets you right, hug him!

Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.

Don't make a novel to establish a principle of political economy. You will spoil both.

Discontent is want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will.

When I walk up the piazza of Santa Croce I feel as if it were not a Florentine nor an European church but a church built by and for the human race.

When a happy person comes into the room, it is as if another candle has been lit.

The affections cannot keep their youth any more than men.