Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is directly received.

Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and enforces them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament.

Never lose an opportunity to see anything that is beautiful. It is God's handwriting a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower.

Thus inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every object fall successively into the subject itself. The subject exists, the subject enlarges; all things sooner or later fall into place. As I am, so I see; use what language we will, we can never say anything but what we are.

The "times," "the age" what is that, but a few profound persons and a few active persons who epitomize the times?

If you are wise, you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with more.

Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.