Fine art, poetry, that kind of thing, elevates a nation.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

... it is because sympathy is but a living again through our own past in a new form, that confession often prompts a response of confession.

there are two ways of speaking an audience will always like: one is, to tell them what they don't understand; and the other is, to tell them what they're used to.

A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

What should I do—how should I act now, this very day . . . What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching murmur which would soon gather distinctness.