It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side.

The condition-of-England question is a practical one. The condition of England demands a hero, not a poet.

Inexpressibly beautiful appears the recognition by man of the least natural fact, and the allying his life to it.

The deeds of love are less questionable than any action of an individual can be, for, it being founded on the rarest mutual respect, the parties incessantly stimulate each other to a loftier and purer life, and the act in which they are associated must be pure and noble indeed, for innocence and purity can have no equal. In this relation we deal with one whom we respect more religiously even than we respect our better selves, and we shall necessarily conduct as in the presence of God. What presence can be more awful to the lover than the presence of his beloved?

Why does it [government] always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?

The gross feeder is a man in the larva state; and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without fancy or imagination,whose vast abdomens betray them.