The public must learn how to cherish the nobler and rarer plants, and to plant the aloe, able to wait a hundred years for it's bloom, or it's garden will contain, presently, nothing but potatoes and pot-herbs.

I find no intellect comparable to my own

We need to hear the excuses men make to themselves for their worthlessness.

Who can ever be alone for a moment in Italy? Every stone has a voice, every grain of dust seems instinct with spirit from the Past, every step recalls some line, some legend of long-neglected lore.

If anything can be invented more excruciating than an English Opera, such as was the fashion at the time I was in London, I am sure no sin of mine deserves the punishment of bearing it.

Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural.

A house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as for the body. For human beings are not so constituted that they can live without expansion. If they do not get it in one way, they must in another, or perish.