There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.

It is doubtful if even experience of riches and success is as intense among those who have experienced nothing else as among those who have also experienced poverty and failure. There is little romance in wealth to those who have been born wealthy and whose families have been wealthy for generations.

With Wordsworth, indeed, the light of revelation did not fall upon human beings so unbrokenly as upon the face of the earth. He knew the birds of the countryside better than the old men, and the flowers far better than the children.

Most human beings are quite likable if you don't see too much of them.

It may be that all games are silly. But then, so are humans.

When people complain of the decay of manners they have in mind not the impudent abbreviations of the crowd, but the decline in bowing and scraping and in speaking of one's employer as "the master." What the rich mean by the good manners of the poor is usually not civility, but servility.

This is woman's great benevolence, that she will become a martyr for beauty, so that the world may have pleasure.