The city is always recruited from the country. The men in cities who are the centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, politics or practical arts, and the women of beauty and genius, are the children or grandchildren of farmers, and are spending the energies which their fathers' hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty furrows in poverty, necessity and darkness.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.

The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.

The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage.

The best of life is conversation.

Beauty is the virtue of the body as virtue is the beauty of the soul

Nature, through all her kingdoms, insures herself.