Reasons for not keeping a notebook: 1) the ambiguity of the reader--it is never quite oneself. 2) I usually hate the sight of my handwriting--it lives too much and I dislike its life--I mean by "lives," of course, betrays too much!

There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination.

It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it.

In the American Metaphysical, reality is always material reality, hard, resistant, unformed, impenetrable, and unpleasant.

We are all ill; but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health.

We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us.

I find righteous denunciations of the present state of the language no less dismaying than the present state of the language.