A heavenly awe overshadowed and encompassed, as it still ought, and must, all earthly business whatsoever.

No good book, or good thing of any sort, shows its best face at first.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a Life-purpose... Get your happiness out of your work or you will never know what real happiness is... Even in the meanest sorts of Labour, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work!

What a wretched thing is all fame! A renown of the highest sort endures, say, for two thousand years. And then? Why, then, a fathomless eternity swallows it. Work for eternity; not the meagre rhetorical eternity of the periodical critics, but for the real eternity wherein dwelleth the Divine.

I came hither [Craigenputtoch] solely with the design to simplify my way of life and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself.

Experience is the best of school masters, only the school fees are heavy.

Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity; men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner.