It is not easy to make our lives respectable by any course of activity. We must repeatedly withdraw into our shells of thought, like the tortoise, somewhat helplessly; yet there is more than philosophy in that.

Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her.

How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character?

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

Since all things are good, men fail at last to distinguish which is the bane and which the antidote.

When a shadow flits across the landscape of the soul where is the substance?