Circumstance does not make the man. Circumstance reveals man to himself.

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.

Religion must always be a crab fruit; it cannot be grafted, and keep its wild beauty.

The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.

Aristotle and Plato are reckoned the respective heads of two schools. A wise man will see that Aristotle platonizes.

Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poeticyouth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.

...in the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in the streets or villages...in the woods we return to reason and faith.