By the irresistible maturing of the general mind, the Christian traditions have lost their hold.

Thought is the seed of action.

The population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God.

The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them.

In our definitions, we grope after the spiritual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning of spiritual is real; that law which executes itself, which works without means, and which cannot be conceived as not existing.

A man's fortunes are the fruit of his character. A man's friends are his magnetisms.

The only gift is a portion of thyself . . . the poet brings his poem; the shepherd his lamb. . . .