“There is a tendency in all things—in the whole Cosmos and in its individual constituents—to struggle towards health.”

Expressing a hopeful vision of creation tending towards wholeness · Unpublished notes, Search for the Ideal

• Hope
• Nature

“The Poet requires his equivalent to be not a sign but a metaphor, and the whole action of his mind on language is therefore to elevate it from the sign towards the metaphor.”

Describing the poet's work as transforming mere signs into living correspondences · Lecture, Nature of Poetry, 1857

• Art
• Poetry

“I find that the moral excellence which religion demands is the highest guarantee of philosophical success.”

Linking moral discipline with intellectual clarity and philosophical achievement · Notes of an Address to Medical Students, 1856

• Faith
• Truth