But the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility.

Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.

Who can . . . guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?

Nature, as we know her, is no saint.... She comes eating and drinking and sinning.

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.

They think him the best dressed man, whose dress is so fit for his use that you cannot notice or remember to describe it.

In imitation is a bit suicide.