Compared with this simple, fibrous life, our civilized history appears the chronicle of debility, of fashion, and the arts of luxury. But the civilized man misses no real refinement in the poetry of the rudest era. It reminds him that civilization does but dress men. It makes shoes, but it does not toughen the soles of the feet. It makes cloth of finer texture, but it does not touch the skin. Inside the civilized man stands the savage still in the place of honor. We are those blue-eyed, yellow-haired Saxons, those slender, dark-haired Normans.

Everything that is printed and bound in a book contains some echo at least of the best that is in literature.

The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar institutions and edicts for his defense, but the toughest son ofearth and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshipers of beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world.

Every man must walk to the beat of his own drummer.

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

Some simple dishes recommend themselves to our imaginations as well as palates.

In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin.