No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. The perfect enigma remains.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science, and such is the mechanical determination of our age, and so recent are our best contrivances, that use has not dulled our joy and pride in them. These arts open great gates of a future, promising to make the world plastic and to lift human life out of its beggary to a godlike ease and power.

When we see a special reformer we feel like asking him, What right have you, sir, to your own virtue? Is virtue piecemeal?

The flowers talk when the wind blows over them.

Nature is a rag-merchant, who works up every shred and ort and end into new creations; like a good chemist, whom I found, the other day, in his laboratory, converting his old shirts into pure white sugar.

If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument

Among provocative, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching.