For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought has given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,--he has come under the bonds to adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached.
We are sure that, though we know not how, necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with thespirit of the times. The riddle of the age has for each a private solution.
If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice.
Without the great arts which speak to the sense of beauty, a man seems to me a poor, naked, shivering creature. These are his becoming draperies, which warm and adorn him.
How can he [today's writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.
The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them.