We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

There is a tendency in things to right themselves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy that shatters rotten system, allows things to take a new and natural order.

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 cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty breaks in everywhere.

Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

A man must be clothed with society, or we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty, as of a displaced and unfurnished member. He is to be dressed in arts and institutions, as well as in body garments. Now and then a man exquisitely made can live alone, and must; but coop up most men and you undo them.