The population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God.

But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with truth and God.

No reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the universe. God is the all-fair. Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All.

The difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward; in talent from without inward.

The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do.

Every man is an infinitely repelling orb, and holds his individual being on that condition.

When there is no vision, people perish.