Life must be lived on a higher plane. We must go up to a higher platform, to which we are always invited to ascend; there, the whole aspect of things changes.

Nothing is arbitrary, nothing is insulated in beauty. It depends forever on the necessary and the useful. The plumage of the bird, the mimic plumage of the insect, has a reason for its rich colors in the constitution of the animal. Fitness is so inseparable an accompaniment of beauty, that it, has been taken for it.

The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him.

For the resolute and determined, there is time and opportunity.

Let him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth as he carries.

Cowardice shuts the eyes till the sky is not larger than a calf-skin: shuts the eyes so that we cannot see the horse that is running away with us; worse, shuts the eyes of the mind and chills the heart.

The sermon which I write inquisitive of truth is good a year after, but that which is written because a sermon must be writ is musty the next day.