To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-ordered variety on the chords of emotion--a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.

The best part of a woman's love is worship; but it is hard to her to be sent away with her precious spikenard rejected, and her long tresses, too, that were let fall, ready to soothe the wearied feet.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity.

There is a mercy which is weakness, and even treason against the common good.

To an old memory like mine the present days are but as a little water poured on the deep.

If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but the inclination of the moment.