The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man.

Love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper-societies are yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody.

You cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. After you have served him, he at once puts you in debt by his magnanimity.

Character is that which can do without success.

The shows of the day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, andthe like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality.

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

All men are poets at heart. They serve nature for bread, but her loveliness overcomes them sometimes.