To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

You seemed to me to be soaring far up in the blue - to be sailing in the bright light, over the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses up a faded rosebud - a missile that should never have reached you - and down you drop to the ground.

... since she might not be splendid, she would at least be immaculate.

Make him [the reader] think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.

The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.

If you haven't had your life what have you had?