Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom.

But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.

Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.

The universe is the externisation of the soul. Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our science is sensual, and therefore superficial. The earth, and the heavenly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if they were self-existent; but these are the retinue of that Being we have.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.

The "times," "the age" what is that, but a few profound persons and a few active persons who epitomize the times?