Beauty rests on necessities.
The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.
Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you?
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.
We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.
If a better system is thine, impart it; if not, make use of mine.
By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.
The serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.
We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.
Life is a series of surprises and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.
If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.
Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.
The endearing elegance of female friendship.
To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.
The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.
The greatest homage we can pay truth is to use it.
Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.
Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.
It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.
Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.
