The plays of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So it is with the largest and solemnest things, with commerce, government, church, marriage, and so with the history of every man's bread, and the ways by which he is to come by it.

The reason why all men honor love is because it looks up, and not down; aspires and not despairs.

Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.

Bonaparte knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and the same way the good soldier, the good astronomer, the good poet, the good player.

The universe does not jest with us, but is in earnest.

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues.

I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to go to church no more.