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.

There was never anything that did not proceed from a thought.

It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.

We over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer, his temptations less. Everything that is his,--his name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth.

There is always safety in valor.

When the literary class betray a destitution of faith, it is not strange that society should be disheartened and sensualized by unbelief.

Bonaparte knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and the same way the good soldier, the good astronomer, the good poet, the good player.