Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he sees. The world is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for all its pride.

We forget ourselves and our destinies in health, and the chief use of temporary sickness is to remind us of these concerns.

We must learn the language of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses.

And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.

In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its cradle. Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness.

Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.

He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public.