You must hear the birds song without attempting to render it into nouns and verbs.

[T]omorrow is a new day. You shall begin it well & serenely, & with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day ... is too dear with its hopes & invitations to waste a moment on the rotten yesterdays.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you, and you are he; then is a teaching; and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever lose the benefit.

The only gift is a portion of thyself . . . the poet brings his poem; the shepherd his lamb. . . .

It depends little on the object, much on the mood, in art.

A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed in what is set above him. He learns that his being is without bound; that to the good, to the perfect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and weakness.