To reform means to shatter one form and to create another; but the two sides of this act are not always equally intended nor equally successful.

Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine.

Poetry is an attenuation, a rehandling, an echo of crude experience; it is itself a theoretic vision of things at arm's length.

Nothing can be lower or more wholly instrumental than the substance and cause of all things.

When a man's life is over, it remains true that he was one sort of man and not another. A man who understands himself under the form of eternity knows the quality that eternally belongs to him, and knows that he cannot wholly die, even if he would, for when the movement of his life is over, the truth of his life remains.

The Fates, like an absent-minded printer, seldom allow a single line to stand perfect and unmarred.

It is characteristic of spontaneous friendship to take on first, without enquiry and almost at first sight, the unseen doings and unspoken sentiments of our friends; the parts known give us evidence enough that the unknown parts cannot be much amiss.