He looked out on the stars and considered the "good master-workman" that made them, on the violets "for which neither the Grand Turk nor the emperor could pay," on the yearly growth of corn and wine, "as great a miracle as the manna in the wilderness," on the "pious, honorable birds" alert to escape the fowler's net, or holding a Diet "in a hall roofed with the vault of heaven, carpeted with the grass, and with walls as far as the ends of the earth." Or he wrote to his son a charming fairy-tale of a pleasant garden where good children eat apples and pears and cherries and plums, and where they ride on pretty ponies with golden reins and silver saddles and dance all day and play with whistles and fifes and little cross-bows.
Luther's character combined traits not usually found in the same nature.

He was both a dreamy mystic and a practical man of affairs; he saw visions and he knew how to make them realities; he was a God-intoxicated prophet and a cool calculator and hard worker for results.

His faith was as simple and passionate as his dogmatic distinctions were often sophistical and arid.

He could attack his foes with berserker fury, and he could be as gentle with a child as only a woman can.

His hymns soar to heaven and his coarse jests trail in the mire.