Nothing you can lose by dying is half as precious as the readiness to die, which is man's charter of nobility.

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 arts must study their occasions; they must stand modestly aside until they can slip in fitly into the interstices of life.

Existence is a miracle, and, morally considered, a free gift from moment to moment.

There must ... be in our very nature a very radical and widespread tendency to observe beauty, and to value it. No account of the principles of the mind can be at all adequate that passes over so conspicuous a faculty.

The profoundest affinities are those most readily felt, and though a thousand later considerations may overlay and override them, they remain a background and standard for all happiness. If we trace them out we succeed.

Columbus found a world, and had no chart save one that Faith deciphered in the skies.