Tragedy is always a mistake; and the loneliness of the deepest thinker, the widest lover, ceases to be pathetic to us so soon as the sun is high enough above the mountains.

You see how wide the gulf that separates me from the Christian church.

It was not meant that the soul should cultivate the earth, but that the earth should educate and maintain the soul.

The critic ... should be not merely a poet, not merely a philosopher, not merely an observer, but tempered of all three.

There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.

To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph-mere stops.

Our friends should be our incentives to right, but not only our guiding, but our prophetic, stars. To love by right is much, to love by faith is more; both are the entire love, without which heart, mind, and soul cannot be alike satisfied. We love and ought to love one another, not merely for the absolute worth of each, but on account of a mutual fitness of temporary character.