Insist on your life, never imitate... do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

A friend is a person who goes around saying nice things about you behind your back.

How much better when the whole land is a garden, and the people have grown up in the bowers of a paradise.

And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim.

In the order of nature, we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort.

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth.

Not a ray is dimmed, not an atom worn; nature's oldest force is as good as new.