The same battle in the clouds will be known to the deaf only as lightning and to the blind only as thunder.

He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better.

Beautiful things, when taste is formed, are obviously and unaccountably beautiful.

The traveller must be somebody and come from somewhere, so that his definite character and moral traditions may supply an organ and a point of comparison for his observations.

Truth is one of the realities covered in the eclectic religion of our fathers by the idea of God. Awe very properly hangs about it, since it is the immovable standard and silent witness of all our memories and assertions; and the past and the future, which in our anxious life are so differently interesting and so differently dark, are one seamless garment for the truth, shining like the sun.

Religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretension to be dealing with matters of fact. That pretension is not only the source of the conflicts of religion with science and the vain and bitter controversies of sects; it is also the cause of the impurity and incoherence of religion in the soul.