It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. It would not leave them narrow-minded and bigoted.

Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against, it.

We soon get through with Nature. She excites an expectation which she cannot satisfy. The merest child which has rambled into a copsewood dreams of a wildness so wild and strange and inexhaustible as Nature can never show him.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

All the past is here, present to be tried; let it approve itself if it can.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.

The best poets, after all, exhibit only a tame and civil side of nature. They have not seen the west side of any mountain.