In the learned journal, in the influential newspaper, I discern no form; only some irresponsible shadow; oftener some monied corporation, or some dangler, who hopes, in the mask and robes of his paragraph, to pass for somebody. But through every clause and part of speech of the right book I meet the eyes of the most determined men; his force and terror inundate every word: the commas and dashes are alive; so that the writing is athletic and nimble,--can go far and live long.

Is there a difference? Yes. We are in harmony with nature, but never at peace.

All life is a nap. The more naps you take the better.

The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself.

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.

A nation, like a tree, does not thrive well till it is engraffed with a foreign stock.

Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.