Not till we are completely lost, or turned round, do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.

The botanist should make interest with the bees if he would know when the flowers open and when they close.

If we dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth.

Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.

Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left.

Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface,not concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil's poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, proving that man is still man in the world.