The wise man, the true friend, the finished character, we seek everywhere, and only find in fragments.

We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.

Every man finds a sanction for his simplest claims and deeds, in decisions of his own mind, which he calls Truth and Holiness.

He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew: The conscious stone to beauty grew.

I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live.