A modern author would have died in infancy in a ruder age.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

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.

First, there is the power of the Wind, constantly exerted over the globe... Here is an almost incalculable power at our disposal, yet how trifling the use we make of it.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

What the banker sighs for, the meanest clown may have-leisure and a quiet mind.

Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.