Perfect ignorance is quiet, perfect knowledge is quiet; not so the transition from the former to the latter.
To the wisest man, wide as is his vision. Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion and all experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square miles.
What this country needs is a man who knows God other than by heresay.
In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a double significance.
A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house!
Are not our greatest men as good as lost? The men that walk daily among us, warming us, feeding us, walk shrouded in darkness, mere mythic men.
A frightful dialect for the stupid, the pedant and dullard sort.
Fancy that thou deservest to be hangedthou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be hanged ina hair halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp.
Silence, the great Empire of Silence: higher than all stars; deeper than the Kingdom of Death! It alone is great; all else is small.
The great silent man! Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world, – words with little meaning, actions with little worth, – one loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence.
The nobleness of silence. The highest melody dwells only in silence, – the sphere melody, the melody of health.
A very sea of thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will, yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but with true orients.
Thought will not work except in silence.
O Time! Time! how it brings forth and devours! And the roaring flood of existence rushes on forever similar, forever changing!
The modern majesty consists in work. What a man can do is his greatest ornament, and he always consults his dignity by doing it.
The world is a thing that a man must learn to despise, and even to neglect, before he can learn to reverence it, and work in it and for it.
The sincere alone can recognize sincerity.
The aristocracy of feudal parchment has passed away with a mighty rushing, and now, by a natural course, we arrive at aristocracy of the money-bag.
What I loved in the man was his health, his unity with himself; all people and all things seemed to find their quite peaceable adjustment with him, not a proud domineering one, as after doubtful contest, but a spontaneous-looking peaceable, even humble one.
That monstrous tuberosity of civilised life, the capital of England.