Who cares what a man's style is, so it is intelligible,--as intelligible as his thought. Literally and really, the style is no more than the stylus, the pen he writes with; and it is not worth scraping and polishing, and gilding, unless it will write his thoughts the better for it. It is something for use, and not to look at. The question for us is, not whether Pope had a fine style, wrote with a peacock's feather, but whether he uttered useful thoughts.

In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts.

Most men I do not meet at all, for they seem not to have time; they are busy about their beans.

What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?

The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.

For if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men?

Is it the lumberman, then, who is the friend and lover of the pine, stands nearest to it, and understands its nature best? Is it the tanner who has barked it, or he who has boxed it for turpentine, whom posterity will fable to have been changed into a pine at last? No! no! it is the poet: he it is who makes the truest use of the pine-who does not fondle it with an axe, nor tickle it with a saw, nor stroke it with a plane. . . .