The people are to be taken in very small doses.

Where there is no vision a people perish.

My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.

A dilettantism in nature is barren and unworthy. A fop of fields is no better than his brother on Broadway.

We may like well to know what is Plato’s and what is Montesquieu’s or Goethe’s part, and what thought was always dear to the writer himself; but the worth of the sentences consists in their radiancy and equal aptitude to all intelligence. They fit all our facts like a charm. We respect ourselves the more that we know them.

Want is a growing giant whom the coat of have was never large enough to cover.

The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature. This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries. Goethe, in this very thing the most modern of the moderns, has shown us, as none ever did, the genius of the ancients.