This generation has come into the world fatally late for some enterprises. Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.... But the lives of men, though more extended laterally in their range, are still as shallow as ever.

Asked whether or not he believed in an afterlife, Thoreau quipped, "One world at a time."

Homer and Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing.

Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic, and his trappings will have to serve that mood too.

When we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.