Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable.

All the best things and treasures of this world are not to be produced by each generation for itself; but we are all intended, not to carve our work in snow that will melt, but each and all of us to be continually rolling a great white gathering snow-ball, higher and higher, larger and larger, along the Alps of human power.

No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, or happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than man could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.

Of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave.

Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.

The Divine mind is as visible in its full energy of operation on every lowly bank and mouldering stone as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven, and settling the foundation of the earth.

It takes a great deal of living to get a little deal of learning.