As thinkers, mankind has ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final and say, The senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealists on the power of Thought and Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, while he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.

Of the Shaker society, it was formerly a sort of proverb in the country, that they always sent the devil to market.

The earth is a machine which yields almost gratuitous service to every application of intellect. Every plant is a manufacturer of soil. In the stomach of the plant development begins. The tree can draw on the whole air, the whole earth, on all the rolling main. The plant is all suction-pipe,--imbibing from the ground by its root, from the air by its leaves, with all its might.

Foolish consistencies are the hobgoblins of small minds!