“Sorrows gather around great souls as storms do around mountains; but, like them, they break the storm and purify the air of the plain beneath them
“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.
“A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life
“A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us; and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us from without.
“Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed
“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius
“Oh heart, if one should say to you that the soul perishes like the body, answer that the flower withers, but the seed remains.