The possibility of interpretation lies in the identity of the observer with the observed. Each material thing has its celestial side; has its translation, through humanity, into the spiritual and necessary sphere, where it plays a part as indestructible as any other.

The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work.

The charming landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title.

Pain, indolence, sterility, endless ennui have also their lesson for you, if you are great.

Let no one honour me with tears, or bury me with lamentation. Why? Because I fly hither and thither, living in the mouths of me.

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

Out from the heart of Nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old.