Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.

What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so. We form no guess, at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative value. And education often wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and balk this natural magnetism, which is sure to select what belongs to it.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

The world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh.

Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour and is not reminded of the flux of all things?

We call the beautiful the highest, because it appears to us the golden mean, escaping the dowdiness of the good and the heartlessness of the true.

As we are, so we do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes.