“We are born believing. A man bears belief, as a tree bears apples.”

“The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.”

“The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.”

“Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.”

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”

“Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel, was never opened; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that he has a greater possibility.”

“Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work but the solidest things we know.”