As every pool reflects the image of the sun, so every thought and thing restores us an image and creature of the supreme Good. Theuniverse is perforated by a million channels for his activity. All things mount and mount.

But genius is religious. It is a larger imbibing of the common heart.

The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.

The charm of the best courages is that they are inventions, inspirations, flashes of genius.

God made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation.

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.

The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage.