Nature is upheld by antagonism.

We stand against fate, as children stand up against the wall in their father's house, and notch their height from year to year. But when the boy grows to a man, and is master of the house, he pulls down that wall and builds it new and bigger.

The maxim of courts is that manner is power.

Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason.

...man is an analogist, and studies relations in all objects. He is placed in the center of beings, and a ray of relation passes from every other being to him. And neither can man be understood without these objects, nor these objects without man.

Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you you have omitted every word that he can spare.

The dead sleep in their moonless night; my business is with the living.