The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bone.

The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance.

No man's thoughts are new, but the style of their expression is the never-failing novelty which cheers and refreshes men. If we were to answer the question, whether the mass of men, as we know them, talk as the standard authors and reviewers write, or rather as this man writes, we should say that he alone begins to write their language at all.

What is sour in the house a bracing walk in the woods makes sweet.

I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came?--till you and I came over to him?

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.