Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams, Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I and this mystery here we stand.

Do anything, but let it produce joy.

This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage, snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.

To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

When I heard the learn’d astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.