In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.

It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.

It is not a great Xerxes army of words, but a compact Greek ten thousand that march safely down to posterity.

All birds during the pairing season become more or less sentimental, and murmur soft nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding-organ repetition and loudness of their habitual song. The crow is very comical as a lover; and to hear him trying to soften his croak to the proper Saint-Preux standard has something the effect of a Mississippi boatman quoting Tennyson.

Be He nowhere else, God is in all that liberates and lifts, in all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles.

Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.

A word once vulgarized can never be rehabilitated.