Among provocative, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching.

Happy will that house be in which the relations are formed from character; after the highest, and not after the lowest order; the house in which character marries, and not confusion and a miscellany of unavowable motives.

I have been told by persons of experience in matters of taste, that the fashions follow a law of gradation, and are never arbitrary. The new mode is always only a step onward in the same direction as the last mode; and a cultivated eye is prepared for and predicts the new fashion.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

America means opportunity, freedom, power.

It is true that the discerning intellect of the world is always much in advance of the creative, so that there are competent judges of the best book, and few writers of the best books.

Each man has his own vocation; his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him.