The best things are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of God just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain common work as it comes certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things of life.

A man finds he has been wrong at every stage of his career, only to deduce the astonishing conclusion that he is at last entirely right.

But we are so fond of life that we have no leisure to entertain the terror of death. It is a honeymoon with us all through, and none of the longest. Small blame to us if we give our whole hearts to this glowing bride of ours, to the appetities, to honour, to the hungry curiosity of the mind, to the pleasure of the eyes in nature, and the pride of our own nimble bodies.

Lastly (and this is, perhaps, the golden rule), no woman should marry a man who does not smoke.

I would rather do a good hours work weeding than write two pages of my best; nothing is so interesting as weeding. I went crazy over the outdoor work, and at last had to confine myself to the house, or literature must have gone by the board.

His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come so near to doing, yet avoided.

The friendly cow, all red and white, I love with all my heart; She gives me cream with all her might, To eat with apple-tart.