I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River, when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.

Criticism is infested with the cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit to imitate the sayers.

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.

We animate what we can see, and we see only what we animate.

In all conversation between two persons, tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God.