Doing philosophy is only a threefold or double kind of waking--being awake--consciousness.

Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us.

To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

Darwin remarks that we are less dazzled by the light at waking, if we have been dreaming of visible objects. Happy are those who have here dreamt of a higher vision! They will the sooner be able to endure the glories of the world to come.

Genius in general is poetic. Where genius has been active it has been poetically active. The truly moral person is a poet.

Nature is an aeolian harp, a musical instrument whose tones are the re-echo of higher strings within us.

It is not merely the multiplicity of tints, the gladness of tone, or the balminess of the air which delight in the spring; it is the still consecrated spirit of hope, the prophecy of happy days yet to come; the endless variety of nature, with presentiments of eternal flowers which never shall fade, and sympathy with the blessedness of the ever-developing world.