All things with which we deal preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun, – it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields.
Men of God have always, from time to time, walked among men, and made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer.
The orator is thereby an orator that keeps his feet ever on a fact.
Pride eradicates all vices but itself.
Pride is handsome, economical; pride eradicates so many vices, letting none subsist but itself, that it seems as if it were a great gain to exchange vanity for pride.
Postpone not your life.
Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us.
A gentleman makes no noise; a lady is serene.
The rain comes when the wind calls.
Read proudly – put the duty of being read invariably on the author. If he is not read, whose fault is it? I am quite ready to be charmed, but I shall not make-believe I am charmed.
Natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals.
Religion must always be a crab fruit; it cannot be grafted, and keep its wild beauty.
Right is more beautiful than private affection, and is compatible with universal wisdom.
There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue.
Every noble activity makes room for itself.
Accuracy is essential to beauty.
The beautiful is never plentiful.
There are many virtues in books, but the essential value is the adding of knowledge to our stock by the record of new facts, and, better, by the record of intuitions which distribute facts, and are the formulas which supersede all histories.
The craft with which the world is made runs also into the mind and character of men. No man is quite sane; each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him hard to some one point which Nature has taken to heart.
If we will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway. The middle region of our being is the temperate zone.