I could hardly feel much confidence in a man who had never been imposed upon.

In the moment of our creation we receive the stamp of our individuality; and much of life is spent in rubbing off or defacing the impression.

A person should go out on the water on a fine day to a small distance from a beautiful coast, if he would see Nature really smile. Never does she look so delightful, as when the sun is brightly reflected by the water, while the waves are gently rippling, and the prospect receives life and animation from the glancing transit of an occasional row-boat, and the quieter motion of a few small vessels. But the land must be well in sight; not only for its own sake, but because the immensity and awfulness of a mere sea-view would ill accord with the other parts of the glittering and joyous scene.

How idle it is to call certain things God-sends! as if there was anything else in the world.

Mythology is not religion. It may rather be regarded as the ancient substitute, the poetical counterpart, for dogmatic theology.

Books, as Dryden has aptly termed them, are spectacles to read nature. Aeschylus and Aristotle, Shakespeare and Bacon, are priests who preach and expound the mysteries of man and the universe. They teach us to understand and feel what we see, to decipher and syllable the hieroglyphics of the senses.

Seeking is not always the way to find.