Indeed the river is a perpetual gala, and boasts each month a new ornament.

Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour and is not reminded of the flux of all things?

When nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor; but none comes, and none will. His class is extinguished with him. In some other and quite different field, the next man will appear.

We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten. We can receive anything from love, forthat is a way of receiving it from ourselves; but not from any one who assumes to bestow. We sometimes hate the meat which we eat, because there seems something of degrading dependence in living it.

Every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.