The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear. It is the storm within which endangers him[,] not the storm without.

Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is.

Nothing great ever happened without enthusiasm.

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

The modernness of all good books seems to give men an existence as wide as man.

...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.