There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.

Comparative criticism teaches us that moral and aesthetic defects are more nearly related than is commonly supposed.

The right of individual property is no doubt the very corner-stone of civilization, as hitherto understood; but I am a little impatient of being told that property is entitled to exceptional consideration because it bears all the burdens of the state. It bears those, indeed, which can be most easily borne, but poverty pays with its person the chief expenses of war, pestilence, and famine.

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.

Most men make the voyage of life as if they carried sealed orders which they were not to open till they were fairly in mid-ocean.

A poet must need be before his own age, to be even with posterity