There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous--secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will--we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books . . . we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland.

Blood was its Avatar and its seal.

Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.

Tell me truly, I implore-- Is there-- is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!

As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.

Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.