The very austerity of the Brahmans is tempting to the devotional soul, as a more refined and nobler luxury. Wants so easily and gracefully satisfied seem like a more refined pleasure. Their conception of creation is peaceful as a dream.
The Universal Soul, as it is called, has an interest in the stacking of hay, the foddering of cattle, and the draining of peat-meadows.
We have need to be earth-born as well as heaven-born, gegeneis, as was said of the Titans of old, or in a better sense than they.
Of what use were it, pray, to get a little wood to burn, to warm your body this cold weather, if there were not a divine fire kindled at the same time to warm your spirit?
How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our bodies; how slow to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our souls!
I have tasted but little bread in my life. It has been mere grub and provender for the most part. Of bread that nourished the brain and the heart, scarcely any. There is absolutely none on the tables even of the rich.
The divinity in man is the true vestal fire of the temple which is never permitted to go out, but burns as steadily and with as pure a flame on the obscure provincial altar as in Numa’s temple at Rome.
Humor, however broad and genial, takes a narrower view than enthusiasm.
Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of.
The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance.
I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha, or Christ, or Swedenborg, who are without the pale of their churches.
In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind.
Heaven is not one of your fertile Ohio bottoms, you may depend on it.
A stranger may easily detect what is strange to the oldest inhabitant, for the strange is his province.
It is said that a rogue does not look you in the face, neither does an honest man look at you as if he had his reputation to establish.
The movements of the eyes express the perpetual and unconscious courtesy of the parties.
The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky.
I have not the most definite designs on the future.
Some interests have got a footing on the earth which we have not made sufficient allowance for.
None can lead this life who are not almost amphibious.