Be sure then to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press on the gossip of the hour. Do not read what you shall learn, without asking, in the street and the train.

Lovers should guard their strangeness. If they forgive too much, all slides into confusion and meanness.

Each truth that a writer acquires is a lantern, which he turns full on what facts and thoughts lay already in his mind, and behold, all the mats and rubbish which had littered his garret become precious. Every trivial fact in his private biography becomes an illustration of this new principle, revisits the day, and delights all men by its piquancy and new charm.

I covet truth; beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth.

All reform aims, in some one particular, to let the soul have its way through us; in other words, to engage us to obey.

The power of a man increases steadily by continuing in one direction.

The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation.