In the long run, truth is aided by nothing so much as by opposition.

What a sublime doctrine it is, that goodness cherished now is eternal life already entered on!

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy the intercourse with superior minds.

We honor revelation too highly to make it the antagonist of reason, or to believe that it calls us to renounce our highest powers.

[Peace] is the highest and most strenuous act of the soul, but an entirely harmonious act, in which all our powers and affections are blending in a beautiful proportion, and sustain and perfect one another. It is more than the silence after storms. It is as the concord of all melodious sounds ... an alliance of love with all beings, a sympathy with all that is pure and happy, a surrender of every separate will and interest, a participation of the spirit and life of the universe.... This is peace, and the true happiness of [humanity].

The mind, in proportion as it is cut off from free communication with nature, with revelation, with God, with itself, loses its life, just as the body droops when debarred from the air and the cheering light from heaven.

Be true to your own highest convictions.