How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth make poetry for a mind that had no movements of awe and tenderness, no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant to the near?

In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past—sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.

She hates everything that is not what she longs for.

When the soul is just liberated from the wretched giant's bed of dogmas on which it has been racked and stretched ever since it began to think, there is a feeling of exultation and strong hope.

You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing.

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.

I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion-the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That's the steam that is to work the engines.