Nature is fair in proportion as the youth is pure. The heavens and the earth are one flower ; the earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.

Inexpressibly beautiful appears the recognition by man of the least natural fact, and the allying his life to it.

A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.

What is man but a mass of thawing clay?

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.

Death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident. It is as common as life.

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.