Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.

Happy the man who never puts on a face, but receives every visitor with that countenance he has on.

We do not make a world of our own, but fall into institutions already made, and have to accommodate ourselves to them to be useful at all.

A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong . . . . Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

No man has ever had a point of pride that was not injurious to him.

The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.