That which distinguishes this day from all others is that then both orators and artillerymen shoot blank cartridges.

The deeper our insight into the methods of nature . . . the more incredible the popular Christianity seems to us.

....success in walking is not to let your right foot know what your left foot doeth. Your heart must furnish such music that in keeping time to it your feet will carry you around the globe without knowing it.

The God of the Puritans...was a monster too horrible to contemplate.

One can only learn his powers of action by action, and his powers of thought by thinking

The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.

If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature.