Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.

The best picture makes us say, I am a painter also.

Solitude is impractical, and society fatal. We must keep our head in the one and our hands in the other. The conditions are met, if we keep our independence, yet do not lose our sympathy.

Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else's head?

The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation.

How casually and unobservedly we make all our most valued acquaintances.

Religion must always be a crab fruit; it cannot be grafted, and keep its wild beauty.