The human heart concerns us more than the poring into microscopes, and is larger than can be measured by the pompous figures of the astronomer.

In every landscape, the point of astonishment is the meeting of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first hillock aswell as from the top of the Alleghanies. The stars at night stoop down over the brownest, homeliest common, with all the spiritual magnificence which they shed on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts of Egypt.

The beautiful is never plentiful.

Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance.

Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.

A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.

Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.