“Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.”

I want nothing to do with politicians. Their hearts wither away, and die out of their bodies. Their consciences are turned to india-rubber, or to some substance as black as that, and which will stretch as much.

If mankind were all intellect, they would be continually changing, so that one age would be entirely unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, which remains the same in all ages; so that commonplaces of a thousand years’ standing are as effective as ever.

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

There is an alchemy of quiet malice by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles.

Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it.

My fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered.

What we need for our happiness is often close at hand, if we knew but how to seek for it.

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.

Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.

The marble keeps merely a cold and sad memory of a man who would else be forgotten. No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one.

The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it!

What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow.

Accuracy is twin brother to honesty, and inaccuracy to dishonesty.

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.

Echo is the voice of a reflection in a mirror.

Every day above earth is a good day.

A lake is a landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

Water is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth. This shows clearly the principle of softness overcoming hardness.

People think they know me, but they don`t. Not really. Actually, I am one of the loneliest people on this earth. I cry sometimes, because it hurts. It does. To be honest, I guess you could say that it hurts to be me.

It’s a brilliant surface in that sunlight. The horizon seems quite close to you because the curvature is so much more pronounced than here on earth. It’s an interesting place to be. I recommend it.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

The earth laughs in flowers.