Nothing is quite beautiful alone; nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace.

The most useful man in the most useful world, so long as only commodity was served, would remain unsatisfied. But, as fast as he sees beauty, life acquires a very high value.

Let a man behave in his own house as a guest.

If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains,--if onlythat the sun shines, and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.

The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy.

The worst feature of this double consciousness is, that the two lives, of the understanding and of the soul, which we lead, reallyshow very little relation to each other; never meet and measure each other: one prevails now, all buzz and din; and the other prevails then, all infinitude and paradise; and, with the progress of life, the two discover no greater disposition to reconcile themselves.

When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with His presence.