Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces, which expose the whole movement.
Moller, in his Essay on Architecture, taught that the building which was fitted accurately to answer its end would turn out to be beautiful, though beauty had not been intended. I find the like unity in human structures rather virulent and pervasive.
It is hard to mesmerize ourselves, to whip our own top; but through sympathy we are capable of energy and endurance. Concert fires people to a certain fury of performance they can rarely reach alone.
The narrow sectarian cannot read astronomy with impunity. The creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the door of the observatory.
The lover of letters loves power too.
Was never secret history but birds tell it in the bowers.
The borrower runs in his own debt.
What art can paint or gild any object in after life with the glow which nature gives to the first baubles of childhood? St. Peter’s cannot have the magical power over us that the red and gold covers of our first picture-book possessed.
A man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies and hatreds of his competitors.
I always seem to suffer some loss of faith on entering cities.
The clergyman who lives in the city may have piety, but he must have taste.
Chiefly the sea-shore has been the point of departure to knowledge, as to commerce. The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.
If the gatherer gathers too-much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates, monopolies and exceptions.
Universally, the better gold the worse man. The political economist defies us to show any gold mine country that is traversed by good roads, or a shore where pearls are found on which good schools are erected.
The whole of heraldry and of chivalry is in courtesy. A man of fine manners shall pronounce your name with all the ornament that titles of nobility could ever add.
The Greek epigram intimates that the force of love is not shown by the courting of beauty, but where the like desire is inflamed for one who is ill-favored.
The foundation of culture, as of character, is at last the moral sentiment.
In the true mythology, Love is an immortal child, and Beauty leads him as a guide; nor can we express a deeper sense than when we say, Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.
He only is a well-made man who has a good determination.
We believe that the defects of so many perverse and so many frivolous people, who make up society, are organic, and society is a hospital of incurables.