All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to village theologies, which preach an election or favoritism.

Who can . . . guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?

It must be that when God speaketh, he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole.Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, - means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it,-one as much as another. All things are disolved to ther center by thier cause.

A farm is a good thing, when it begins and ends with itself, and does not need a salary, or a shop, to eke it out.

The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics.

A friend is a person who goes around saying nice things about you behind your back.