Essays: First Series

There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the…

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an…

Ever since I was a boy, I have wished to write a discourse on Compensation: for it seemed to me when very young, that on this subject life…

When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is…

Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfilments; each of its joys ripens into a new want. Nature, uncontainable, flowing,…

We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. Maugre all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human…

What right have I to write on Prudence, whereof I have little,and that of the negative sort? My prudence consists in avoiding and going…

In the elder English dramatists, and mainly in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a constant recognition of gentility, as if a…

There is a difference between one and another hour of life, in their authority and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments; our vice…

The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.…

Every substance is negatively electric to that which stands above it in the chemical tables, positively to that which stands below it.…

Because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats itself, but in every act attempts the production of a new and fairer whole. This…