Since everything in nature answers to a moral power, if any phenomenon remains brute and dark, it is that the corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet active.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

The sciences, even the best,-mathematics and astronomy,-are like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey offers, even without being able to make any use of it.

The man in the street does not know a star in the sky.

Great thoughts ensure musical expression.

A poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says every thing, saying, at last, something good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. There is nothing whimsical or fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times.

It is in the stomach of plants that development begins, and ends in the circles of the universe. 'Tis a long scale from the gorilla to the gentleman,--from the gorilla to Plato, Newton, Shakespeare,--to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of legislation, the summit of science, art, and poetry. The beginnings are slow and infirm, but it is an always accelerated march.