God will not make himself manifest to cowards

It is a mischievous notion that we are come late into nature; that the world was finished a long time ago. As the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it. To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They adapt to themselves to it as they may; but in proportion as a man has anything in him divine, the firmament flows before him and takes his signet and form.

Truth is too simple for us: we do not like those who unmask our illusions.

Great causes are never tried on their merits; but the cause is reduced to particulars to suit the size of the partizans, and the contention is ever hottest on minor matters.

In the history of the individual is always an account of his condition, and he knows himself to be a party to his present estate.

At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish.

I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.