Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from the work of art of human character, — a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes.

The difference between the actual and the ideal force of man is happily figured in by the schoolmen, in saying, that the knowledgeof man is an evening knowledge, vespertina cognitio, but that of God is a morning knowledge, matutina cognitio.

A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.

Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

That which we call sin in others is experiment for us.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Be sure then to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press on the gossip of the hour. Do not read what you shall learn, without asking, in the street and the train.