“All words, then, belonging to the inner world of the mind, are of the imagination, are originally poetic words.”

“For the world is - allow us the homely figure - the human being turned inside out. All that moves in the mind is symbolized in Nature. Or, to use another more philosophical, and certainly not less poetic figure, the world is a sensuous analysis of humanity, and hence an inexhaustible wardrobe for the clothing of human thought. Take any word expressive of emotion - take the word 'emotion' itself - and you will find that its primary meaning is of the outer world. In the swaying of the woods, in the unrest of the "wavy plain" the imagination saw the picture of a well-known condition of the human mind; and hence the word 'emotion'.The man who cannot invent will never discover.Wisdom as well as folly will serve a fool's purpose; he turns all into folly.”

“If we speak of direct means for the culture of the imagination, the whole is comprised in two words--food and exercise.”

“It is to the man who is trying to live, to the man who is obedient to the word of the Master, that the word of the Master unfolds itself.”

“But words are vain; reject them all— They utter but a feeble part:Hear thou the depths from which they call, The voiceless longing of my heart.”

“As the love of him who is love transcends ours as the heavens are higher than the earth, so must he desire in his child infinitely more than the most jealous love of the best mother can desire in hers. He would have him rid of all discontent, all fear, all grudging, all bitterness in word or thought, all gauging and measuring of his own with a different rod from that he would apply to another's. He will have no curling of the lip; no indifference in him to the man whose service in any form he uses; no desire to excel another, no contentment at gaining by his loss. He will not have him receive the smallest service without gratitude; would not hear from him a tone to jar the heart of another, a word to make it ache, be the ache ever so transient.”

“He was in fact a poet without words, the more absorbed and endangered, that the springing waters were dammed back in his soul, where, finding no utterance, they grew, and swelled, and undermined.”