The field cannot be seen from within the field.

We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought forthe morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own.

Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdom which cannot help itself.

There is always safety in valor.

Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language put together into a most significant and universal sense. I wish to learn this language - not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book which is written in that tongue.

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.

It is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much, but I am my own comedy and tragedy.