The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.

I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone.

How insupportable would be the days, if the night with its dews and darkness did not come to restore the drooping world. As the shades begin to gather around us, our primeval instincts are aroused, and we steal forth from our lairs, like the inhabitants of the jungle, in search of those silent and brooding thoughts which are the natural prey of the intellect.

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.