Various

“ But could we behold the Kosmos as it is beheld by its Creator, we should perchance find the whole encyclopedia of our science resting upon a few great, but simple laws; we should see that the whole universe, in all its infinite complication, is the fulfilment of perhaps a single simple thought of the Divine Mind, and that it is this unity pervading the diversity which makes it the Kosmos, Beauty. ”

“ Another English pickpocket appears to have Alps on Alps of difference between him and a thief. Good-nature prevails; there is a little latent fire; not enough energy to be bad, or good, against the current. He has some quiet dignity, too,—the head, in fine, of a genial, dining Dombey, if such a man can be imagined. Face a good oval, rather full in flesh, forehead square, without particular strength, a nose that was never unaccompanied by good taste and understanding, and mouth a little lickerish;—the incarnation of the popular idea of a bank-president. ”

“ The nineteenth century has produced no more purely original writer than Mr. Hawthorne. A shallow criticism has sometimes fancied a resemblance between him and Poe. But it seems to us that the difference between them is the immeasurable one between talent carried to its ultimate, and genius,—between a masterly adaptation of the world of sense and appearance to the purposes of Art, and a so thorough conception of the world of moral realities that Art becomes the interpreter of something profounder than herself. ”

“ And yet, grant him his premises, that is, let him once get his morbid tendency, whether inherited or the result of special experience, either incarnated as a new man or usurping all the faculties of one already in the flesh, and it is marvellous how subtilely and with what truth to as much of human nature as is included in a diseased consciousness he traces all the finest nerves of impulse and motive, how he compels every trivial circumstance into an accomplice of his art, and makes the sky flame with foreboding or the landscape chill and darken with remorse. ”

“ And that sublime upsurging from the depths of human nature which came with the last half of the eighteenth century appeared not alone in the new political and social aspirations, but in a fresh insight into Nature. This spirit manifested itself in the new sciences that sprang from the new modes of vision,—Magnetism, Electricity, Chemistry,—the old crystalline spell departing before a dynamical system of Physics, before the thought of the universe as a living organic whole. And what provokers does the discovery of the celestial circles bring to new circles of politics and social life! ”

“ We seek in all things simplicity and unity. In Nature we have faith that there is such unity, even in the midst of the wildest diversity. We honor intellectual conceptions in proportion to the greatness of their consequences and to the simplicity of their assumptions. Laws of form are beautiful in proportion to their simplicity and to the variety which they can comprise in unity. The beauty of forms themselves is in proportion to the simplicity of their law and to the variety of their outline. ”

“ We are thus led, through our search for beauty, into the temple of Geometry, the most ancient and venerable of sciences. From her oracles alone can we learn the generation of beauty, so far as it consists in form alone.
Maupertuis' law of the least action is not simply a mechanical, but it is a universal axiom. The Divine Being does all things with the least possible expenditure of force; and all hearts and all minds honor men in proportion as they approach to this divine economy. ”

“ But the American has lost the elementary uses of his mother tongue. He is perpetually inventing new abstract terms, generalizing with boldness and power and utter contempt of usage. But the rich idiomatic sources of his speech lie too deep for him. They are the glory and the joy of our motherland. You may take up "Bradshaw" and amuse yourself on the wettest day at the dullest inn, nay, even amid the horrors of the railway station, with deciphering the hidden meanings of its lists of names, and form for yourself the gliding panorama of its changing scenery and historic renown. ”

“ Little fool again! She was like a chicken thrusting its head into a corner and thinking itself out of danger because it cannot see the danger. She had no notion that she was giving him the least clue to the truth, but considered herself speaking with more than Delphic prudence. She rather liked to coast along the shores of her trouble and see how near she could approach without running aground; but she struck before she knew it.
Mr. Clerron's face suddenly changed. He sat down, took both her hands, and drew her towards him. ”

“ So in the harmony of the spheres, in the varied beauty which clothes the earth and pervades the heavens, in the beauty which addresses itself to eye and ear, and in the beauty which addresses only the inward sense,—the harmonious arrangements of the social world, and the adjustment of domestic, civil, and political relations,—there is an infinite diversity of result, infinitely varied in its effect upon the observer. ”

“ It cannot spring from anything purely accidental; it does not arise from material, but from spiritual forces. That the outline of a figure, and its surface, are capable of expressing the emotions of the mind is manifest from the art of the sculptor, which represents in cold, colorless marble the varied expressions of living faces,—or from the art of the engraver, who, by simple outlines, can soothe you with a swelling lowland landscape, or brace you with the cool air of the mountains.
Now the highest beauty is doubtless that which expresses the noblest emotion. ”

“ Round her neck was a golden torque, a round, cord-like chain, such as the Gauls used to wear: the "Dying Gladiator" has it. Her dress was a grayish watered silk; her collar was pinned with a flashing diamond brooch, the stones looking as fresh as morning dew-drops, but the silver setting of the past generation; her arms were bare, round, but slender rather than large, in keeping with her lithe round figure. On her wrists she wore bracelets: one was a circlet of enamelled scales; the other looked as if it might have been Cleopatra's asp, with its body turned to gold and its eyes to emeralds. ”

“ A genius for language comes doubtless by nature, but Mr. Marsh is too wise a man to believe that a knowledge of it comes in the same way; his learning has that ripened clearness which tells of olden vintages and of long storing in the crypts of the brain; he has nothing in common with the easy generalizers who know as little of roots as Shelley's skylark, and who, seeking a shelter in welcome clouds, pour forth "profuse strains of unpremeditated art" upon questions which above all others are limited by exact science and unyielding fact. ”

“ Yet, without the ellipse, without the conic sections of Plato and Apollonius, astronomy would have been to this day a sealed science, and the labors of Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Tycho, and Copernicus would have waited in vain for the genius of Kepler and of Newton to educe divine order from the seeming chaos of motions.
But the obligations of man to the ellipse do not end here. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also owe it a debt of gratitude. ”

“ We believe the splendid nebular construction of Laplace has its own difficulties; yet what noble or aspiring mind does not find interior warranties for the truth of that audacious synthesis? Is it that the soul darts responsive impartments to the heavens? that the whirl is elemental in the mind? that baffling intervals stretch deeper within us, and shoals of stars with no parallax appear?
Among the functions of Science, then, may well be included its power as a metre of the intellectual advance of mankind. In these splendid symbols man writes the record of his advancing humanity. ”

“ But it remains for modern times to emulate Nature and carry on analysis and synthesis at once. A great discovery is the birth of the whole soul in its creative activity. Induction becomes fruitful only when married to Deduction. It is those luminous intuitions that light along the path of discovery that give the eye and animus to generalization. Science must be open to influx and new beneficent affections and powers, and so add fleet wings to the mind in its exploration of Nature. ”

“ It is not everybody that enters into the soul of Mozart's or Beethoven's harmonies; and there are vital symphonies in B flat, and other low, sad keys, which a doctor may know as little of as a hurdy-gurdy player of the essence of those divine musical mysteries. The Doctor knew the difference between what men say and what they mean as well as most people. When he was listening to common talk, he was in the habit of looking over his spectacles ”

“ The celestial revelations of the sixteenth century came as the necessary complement of the new mental firmaments then dawning on the thought of man. The intellectual revolution caused by the discovery of the double motion of our planet was undoubtedly the mightiest that man had ever experienced, and its effect was to change the entire aspect of his speculative and practical activity. What a proof that ideas rule the world! ”

“ As a single example, take the most beautiful of the fine arts, the art which is free from the laws of space, and subject only to those of time, and in which, therefore, we find a beauty removed as far as possible from that of curvilinear outlines. How exceedingly simple are the fundamental laws of music, of simple rhythm and simple harmony yet how infinitely varied, and how inexpressibly touching are its effects! In studying music as a mere matter of intellectual science, all is simple ”

“ For it is my opinion that the occasions by which men have acquired a knowledge of celestial phenomena are not less admirable than the discoveries themselves." His tentatives, failures, leadings, his glimpses and his glooms, those aberrations and guesses and gropings generally so scrupulously concealed, he exposes them all. From the first flashing of a discovery, through years of tireless toil, to when the glorious apparition emerges full-orbed and resplendent, we follow him, becoming party to the process, and sharing the ejaculations of exultation that leap to his lips. ”

“ Even if it should not be sought to enslave the Indians of Mexico, that race would not be the less doomed. There seems to be no chance for Indians in any country into which the Anglo-Saxon enters in force. A system of free labor would be as fatal to the Mexican Indians as a system of slave labor. The whites who would throng to Mexico, on its conquest by Americans, and on the supposition that slavery should not be established there, would regard the Indians with sentiments of strong aversion. ”

“ It is, then, true, that all the beauty of the vegetable world which depends on the arrangement of parts—the graceful symmetry or more graceful apparent disregard of symmetry in the general form of plants, all the charm of the varying forms of forest trees, which adds such loveliness to the winter landscape, and such a refined source of pleasure to the exhilaration of the winter morning walk—is the result of the simplest variations in a simple numerical law; and is thus clearly brought under our fundamental canon. ”

“ We do not hate thieves. We feel satisfied that even in the character of a man who does not respect ownership there may be much to admire. Sparkles of genius scintillate along the line of many a rogue's career. Many there are, it is true, who are obtuse and vicious below the mean,—but a far greater number display skill and courage infinitely above it. Points of noble character, of every good as well as most base characteristics of the human race, will be found in the annals of thievery, when they are written aright. ”