Nature is like a beautiful woman that may be as delightfully and as truly known at a certain distance as upon a closer view; as to knowing her through and through; that is nonsense in both cases, and might not reward our pains.

To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.

Thought is essentially practical in the sense that but for thought no motion would be an action, no change a progress.

The works of nature first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke.

Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it.

That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.

Injustice in this world is not something comparative; the wrong is deep, clear, and absolute in each private fate.