To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.

The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence.

A truly good book attracts very little favor to itself. It is so true that it teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down and commence living on its hint. When I read an indifferent book, it seems the best thing I can do, but the inspiring volume hardly leaves me leisure to finish its latter pages. It is slipping out of my fingers while I read. It creates no atmosphere in which it may be perused, but one in which its teachings may be practiced. It confers on me such wealth that I lay it down with regret. What I began by reading I must finish by acting.

With all your science can you tell me how it is, and when it is, that light comes into the soul?

It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws.

Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.

Very few men can speak of Nature, for instance, with any truth. They overstep her modesty, somehow or other, and confer no favor.They do not speak a good word for her. Most cry better than they speak, and you can get more nature out of them by pinching than by addressing them. The surliness with which the woodchopper speaks of his woods, handling them as indifferently as his axe, is better than the mealy-mouthed enthusiasm of the lover of nature. Better that the primrose by the river's brim be a yellow primrose, and nothing more, than that it be something less.