He is a dull observer whose experience has not taught him the reality and force of magic, as well as of chemistry.

Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.

Astronomy taught us our insignificance in Nature.

Earth laughs in flowers.

The delicate muses lose their head if their attention is once diverted. Perhaps if you were successful abroad in talking and dealing with men, you would not come back to your bookshelf and your task. When the spirit chooses you for its scribe to publish some commandment, it makes you odious to men and men odious to you, and you shall accept that loathsomeness with joy. The moth must fly to the lamp, and you must solve those questions though you die.

An imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, when we arrive atthe precise sense of the author. I think nothing is of any value in books, excepting the transcendental and extraordinary.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.