This is one of those instances in which the individual genius is found to consent, as indeed it always does, at last, with the universal.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

There they lived on, those New England people, farmer lives, father and grandfather and great-grandfather, on and on without noise, keeping up tradition, and expecting, beside fair weather and abundant harvests, we did not learn what. They were contented to live, since it was so contrived for them, and where their lines had fallen.

If it is the result of a pure love, there can be nothing sensual in marriage. Chastity is something positive, not negative. It isthe virtue of the married especially. All lusts or base pleasures must give place to loftier delights. They who meet as superior beings cannot perform the deeds of inferior ones.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves.