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.

The test of an author is not to be found merely in the number of his phrases that pass current in the corner of newspapers... but in the number of passages that have really taken root in younger minds.

How much that the world calls selfishness is only generosity with narrow walls,--a too exclusive solicitude to maintain a wife in luxury, or make one's children rich.

The first wild-flower of the year is like land after sea.

But days even earlier than these, in April, have a charm, — even days that seem raw and rainy, when the sky is dull and a bequest of March - wind lingers, chasing the squirrel from the tree and the children from the meadows. There is a fascination in walking through these bare early woods, – there is such a pause of preparation, winter's work is so cleanly and thoroughly done. Everything is taken down and put away.

How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year!

After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence. As Ruskin wrote in his earlier and better days, "No weight nor mass nor beauty of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought.