It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him.

But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Life is short but there is always time for courtesy.

Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe.

The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.