All the fairy tales of Aladdin, or the invisible Gyges, or the talisman that opens kings' palaces, or the enchanted halls underground or in the sea, are only fictions to indicated the one miracle of intellectual enlargement.

Many of the historical proverbs have a doubtful paternity.

The chief value of the new fact is to enhance the great and constant fact of life.

Bare lists of words are found suggestive to an imaginative and excited mind.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere.

The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself and whatever science or art or course of action he engages in reacts upon and illuminates the recesses of his own mind. Thus friends seem to be only mirrors to draw out and explain to us ourselves; and that which draws us nearer our fellow man, is, that the deep Heart in one, answers the deep Heart in another, - that we find we have (a common Nature) - one life which runs through all individuals, and which is indeed Divine.