Look out into the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the meadow-flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous age,—lasting as space and time,—embosomed in time and space.

Philanthropic and religious bodies do not commonly make their executive officers out of saints.

Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.

Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state these functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his.

That is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual; the wise man wonders at the usual.

[D]ivine Providence... keeps the universe open in every direction to the soul.

Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience.