Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in the river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea.

If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience.

I will not hide my tastes or aversions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own.

I do not wonder at a snowflake, a shell, a summer landscape, or the glory of the stars; but at the necessity of beauty under which the universe lies.

Drive out Nature with a fork, she comes running back.

It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist

Wise cultivated, genial conversation is the last flower of civilization, and the best result which life has to offer us,--a cup for gods, which has no repentance. Conversation is our account of ourselves. All we have, all we can, all we know, is brought into play, and as the reproduction in finer form, of all our havings.