Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

the mystic must be steadily told,—All that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us have a little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric,—universal signs, instead of these village symbols,—and we shall both be gainers. The history of hierarchies seems to show that all religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid, and was at last nothing but an excess of the organ of language.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

The individual is always mistaken

One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye; it transcends speech; it is the bodily symbol of identity

Washington, where an insignificant individual may trespass on a nation's time.