We teach boys to be such men as we are. We do not teach them to aspire to be all they can. We do not give them a training as if webelieved in their noble nature. We scarce educate their bodies. We do not train the eye and the hand. We exercise their understandings to the apprehension and comparison of some facts, to a skill in numbers, in words; we aim to make accountants, attorneys, engineers; but not to make able, earnest, great- hearted men.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

You think me the child of circumstance; I make my circumstance.

The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself.

Books are for nothing but to inspire

There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent

The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.