Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

Who does not sometimes envy the good and the brave, who are no more to suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await with curious complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with finite nature?

The inmost in due time becomes the outmost.

I please myself with the graces of the winter scenery, and believe that we are as much touched by it as by the genial influences of summer.

The world leaves no track in space, and the greatest action of man no mark in the vast idea.

We wake from one dream into another dream.

Nature does not cocker us: we are children, not pets: she is not fond: everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal laws.