In the moment when you make the least petition to God, though it be but a silent wish that he may approve you, or add one moment to your life,--do you not, in the very act, necessarily exclude all other beings from your thought? In that act, the soul stands alone with God, and Jesus is no more present to your mind than your brother or your child.

Do what you know and perception is converted into character.

The riddle of the age has for each a private solution.

The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action, to any end, is art.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

The last change in our point of view gives the whole world a pictorial air.

The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.