The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude. - James Russell Lowell

I do not believe in violent changes, nor do I expect them. Things in possession have a very firm grip. One of the strongest cements of society is the conviction of mankind that the state of things into which they are born is a part of the order of the universe, as natural, let us say, as that the sun should go round the earth. It is a conviction that they will not surrender except on compulsion, and a wise society should look to it that this compulsion be not put upon them. For the individual man there is no radical cure, outside of human nature itself, for the evils to which human nature is heir.

The Maple puts her corals on in May,
While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling,
To be in tune with what the robins sing.

It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of a man is tested.