A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.

I do not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster.

This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.

My life is like a stroll upon the beach.

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

Have we even so much as discovered and settled the shores? Let a man travel on foot along the coastand tell me if it looks like a discovered and settled country, and not rather, for the most part, like a desolate island, and No-Man's Land.