The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation.

He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contracted.

How beautiful to have the church always open, so that every tired wayfaring man may come in and be soothed by all that art can suggest of a better world when he is weary with this.

To laugh often and much ... this is to have succeeded. Probably not from Emerson: here's the full quotation and the story.

Great conversation ... requires an absolute running of two souls into one.

The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose.

The force of character is cumulative.