It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man's death hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred too.

It had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid.

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?

He was one of those men, and they are not the commonest, of whom we can know the best only by following them away from the marketplace, the platform, and the pulpit, entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with which they speak to the young and aged about their own hearthstone, and witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday companions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not as a subject for panegyric.

It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.

It is impossible, to me at least, to be poetical in cold weather.

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.