The secret of poetry is never explained,— is always new. We have not got farther than mere wonder at the delicacy of the touch, and the eternity it inherits. In every house a child that in mere play utters oracles, and knows not that they are such. 'T is as easy as breath. 'T is like this gravity, which holds the Universe together, and none knows what it is.

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. If two or three persons should come with a high spiritual aim and with great powers, the world would fall into their hands like a ripe peach.

And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim.

Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.

You must elect your work; you shall take what your brains can, and drop all the rest. Only so can that amount of vital force accumulate which can make the step from knowing to doing. No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken. It is a step out of a chalk circle of imbecility into fruitfulness.

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept or if you have slept or if you have head ache or sciatica or leprosy or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace and not pollute the morning.

To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them.