Nothing can hide from me the conviction that an immortal soul needs for its sustenance something more than visiting, and gardening, and novel-reading, and crochet-needle, and the occasional manufacture of sponge cake.

What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow of a mother's love, fixed in permanent outline forever?

Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality.

Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes.

Only yonder magnificent pine-tree... holds her unchanging beauty throughout the year, like her half-brother, the ocean, whose voice she shares; and only marks the flowing of her annual tide of life by the new verdure that yearly submerges all trace of last year's ebb.

There are no days in the whole round year more delicious than those which often come to us in the latter half of April... The sun trembles in his own soft rays... The grass in the meadow seems all to have grown green since yesterday.

Noble discontent is the path to heaven.