The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change; Then let it come: I have no dread of what Is called for by the instinct of mankind. Nor think I that God's world would fall apart Because we tear a parchment more or less. Truth is eternal, but her effluence, With endless change, is fitted to the hour; Her mirror is turned forward, to reflect The promise of the future, not the past. I do not fear to follow out the truth.

The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change... [Truth's] mirror is turned forward, to reflect The promise of the future, not the past.

Metaphor is no argument, though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home, and imbed it in the memory.

A friendship counting nearly forty years is the finest kind of shade-tree I know.

It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is...

He gives us the very quintessence of perception,-the clearly crystalized precipitation of all that is most precious in the ferment of impression after the impertinent and obtrusive particulars have evaporated from the memory.

Through aisles of long-drawn centuries my spirit walks in thought.