“I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.”

Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855), The Necessity, the Reality, and the Promise of the Progress of the Human Race (1854)
Context: The unchanging character of law is the only basis on which continuous action can rest. Without it man would be but as the traveller over endless morasses; the builder on quicksands; the mariner without compass or rudder, driven successively whithersoever changing winds may blow. The universe is the reflex and image of its Creator. "The true work of art," says Michael Angelo, "is but a shadow of the Divine perfections." We may say in a more general manner, that Beauty Itself Is But The Sensible Image Of The Infinite; that all creation is a manifestation of the Almighty; not the result of caprice, but the glorious display of his perfection; and as the universe thus produced, is always in the course of change, so its regulating mind is a living Providence, perpetually exerting itself anew. If his designs could be thwarted, we should lose the great evidence of his unity, as well as the anchor of our own hope.
Harmony is the characteristic of the intellectual system of the universe; and immutable laws of moral existence must pervade all time and all space, all ages and all worlds.

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Pearls of Wisdom

Source: Charles to Sarah in Ch. 47, p. 340 note: The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969)

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)
Context: 23. “But the Lord thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed. 24. “And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven; there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them.”— Deut. Vii. If these words had proceeded from the mouth of a demon, if they had been spoken by some enraged and infinitely malicious fiend, I should not have been surprised. But these things are attributed to a God of infinite mercy.

Source: Paradise Lost

Antimonies
Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

"Childhood's End", on Obscured by Clouds (1972)
Context: Who are you and who am I
To say we know the reason why
Some are born, some men die,
Beneath one infinite sky?
There'll be war, there'll be peace,
But everything one day will cease,
All the iron turned to rust,
All the proud men turned to dust,
And so all things time will mend,
So this song will end.

Source: Life of Galileo (1939)