We are very near to greatness: one step and we are safe; can we not take the leap?

A man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies and hatreds of his competitors.

Never self-possessed, or prudent, love is all abandonment.

Personal beauty is then first charming and itself, when it dissatisfies us with any end; when it becomes a story without an end; when it suggests gleams and visions, and not earthly satisfactions; when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness; when he cannot feel his right to it, though he were Caesar; he cannot feel more right to it than to the firmament and the splendors of a sunset.

All things with which we deal preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,--it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields.

Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal.

Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology.