“In philosophy equally as in poetry it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.”

With all our wisdom and foresight we can take a lesson in gladness and gratitude from the happy bird that sings all night, as if the day were not long enough to tell its joy.

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

To be beloved is all I need, And whom I love, I love indeed.

Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.

The history of man for the nine months preceding his birth would, probably, be far more interesting and contain events of greater moment than all the three score and ten years that follow it.

To believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same things in different periods of growth.

Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.

Until you understand a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.

A great mind must be androgynous.

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

Silence does not always mark wisdom.

Democracy is the healthful lifeblood which circulates through the veins and arteries, which supports the system, but which ought never to appear externally, and as the mere blood itself.

There is in every human countenance either a history or a prophecy which must sadden, or at least soften every reflecting observer.

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

I never knew a trader in philanthropy who was not wrong in his head or heart somewhere or other.

A bitter and perplexed “What shall I do?” Is worse to man than worse necessity.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

What we call the highest and the lowest in nature are both equally perfect. A willow bush is as beautiful as the human form divine.

The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover.

For talking monkeys to speak of truth is hubris of the highest degree. Where is it writ large that talking monkeys should be able to model the cosmos? If a sea urchin or a racoon were to propose to you that it had a viable truth about the universe.

The soldier, above all other men, is required to perform the highest act of religious offering-sacrifice. In battle and in the face of danger and death he discloses those divine attributes which his amke gave when he created in his own image.

Genius of the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power.

Freemasonry embraces the highest moral laws and will bear the test of any system of ethics or philosophy ever promulgated for the uplift of man.

But that we may find illustrations of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there is matter in motion.