Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.

The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.

It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.

Nature drives with a loose rein and vitality of any sort can blunder through many a predicament in which reason would despair.

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.

The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.