'I'm not beautiful, I'm pretty!' (Angrily at age 2 and a half. After getting into his sister's toy makeup case and being called beautiful...)

'Daddy, how many whoppers are there in those tall trees?' After waking up in the car while driving through Calaveras Big Trees and hearing daddy say, 'Wow, that's a whopper of a tree.'

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition; but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.

The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children. The mighty abstract idea I have of beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness.

'The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.'