Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

Faith is like private capital, stored in one's own house. It is like a public savings bank or loan office, from which individuals receive assistance in their days of need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.

There is a great difference, whether the poet seeks the particular for the sake of the general or sees the general in the particular. From the former procedure there ensues allegory, in which the particular serves only as illustration, as example of the general. The latter procedure, however, is genuinely the nature of poetry; it expresses something particular, without thinking of the general or pointing to it.

Higher yet and higher out of clouds and night, nearer yet and nearer rising to the light - light, serene and holy where my soul may rest, purified and lowly, sanctified and blest.

Reality surpasses imagination; and we see, breathing, brightening, and moving before our eyes sights dearer to our hearts than any we ever beheld in the land of sleep.

How happy he who can still hope to lift himself from this sea of error! What we know not, that we are anxious to possess, and cannot use what we know.

Basic characteristics of an individual organism: to divide, to unite, to merge into the universal, to abide in the particular, to transform itself, to define itself, and as living things tend to appear under a thousand conditions, to arise and vanish, to solidify and melt, to freeze and flow, to expand and contract. Since these effects occur together, any or all may occur at the same moment.