A lady with whom I was riding in the forest said to me that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspend their deeds until the wayfarer had passed onward; a thought which poetry has celebrated in the dance of the fairies, which breaks off on the approach of human feet.

We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

A man of thought must feel the thought that is parent of the universe: that the masses of nature do undulate and flow.

We stand against fate, as children stand up against the wall in their father's house, and notch their height from year to year. But when the boy grows to a man, and is master of the house, he pulls down that wall and builds it new and bigger.

A friend is the hope of the heart.

The household is a school of power. There, within the door, learn the tragi-comedy of human life.