Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet.

Give me wine to wash me clean of the weather-stains of cares

To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone.

What has been done in the world - the works of genius - cost nothing. There is no painful effort, but it is the spontaneous flowing of the thought. Shakespeare made his Hamlet as a bird weaves its nest.

A man in a cave or in a camp, a nomad, will die with no more estate than the wolf or the horse leaves.

Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is made--no matter how indirectly--to numbers, proclamation is then and there made, that religion is not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping presence, who shall dare to come in?

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.