Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
The whole value of solitude depends upon oneself; it may be a sanctuary or a prison, a haven of repose or a place of punishment, a heaven or a hell, as we ourselves make it.
We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth.
If we are ever in doubt what to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow that we had done.
Our duty is to believe that for which we have sufficient evidence, and to suspend our judgment when we have not.
If we succeed in giving the love of learning, the learning itself is sure to follow.
A wise system of education will at least teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.
In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is wanting.
Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.
When we have done our best, we should wait the result in peace.
A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work.
A cheerful friend is like a sunny day which sheds its brightness on all around.
To render ourselves insensible to pain we must forfeit also the possibilities of happiness.
A poor woman from Manchester on being taken to the seaside is said to have expressed her delight on seeing for the first time something of which there was enough for everybody.
A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work.
Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.
Sunsets are so beautiful that they almost seem as if we were looking through the gates of Heaven.
Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.