Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downwards through the mud and slush of opinion and tradition, and pride and prejudice, appearance and delusion, through the alluvium which covers the globe, through poetry and philosophy and religion, through church and state, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, till we come to a hard bottom that rocks in place which we can call reality and say, "This is and no mistake.

A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.

What an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life! Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is far more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior.

Those undeserved joys which come uncalled and make us more pleased than grateful are they that sing.

Tradition is a more interrupted and feebler memory.

The Heavens are as deep as our aspirations are high.