I have unlearned contempt; it is a sin that is engendered earliest in the soul, and doth beset it like a poison worm feeding on all its beauty.

We may believe that we shall know each other's forms hereafter; and in the bright fields of the better land call the lost dead to us.

Fine taste is an aspect of genius itself, and is the faculty of delicate appreciation, which makes the best effects of art our own.

A flirt is like a dipper attached to a hydrant; every one is at liberty to drink from it, but no one desires to carry it away.

The highest triumph of art, is the truest presentation of nature.

Wisdom, sits alone, topmost in heaven: she is its light, its God; and in the heart of man she sits as high, though groveling minds forget her oftentimes, seeing but this world's idols.

There is to me a daintiness about early flowers that touches me like poetry. They blow out with such a simple loveliness among the common herbs of pastures, and breathe their lives so unobtrusively, like hearts whose beatings are too gentle for the world.