All the fairy tales of Aladdin, or the invisible Gyges, or the talisman that opens kings' palaces, or the enchanted halls underground or in the sea, are only fictions to indicated the one miracle of intellectual enlargement.

And of poetry, the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavours after the unattainable.

Freedom is the essence of this faith. It has for its object simply to make men good and wise. Its institutions then should be as flexible as the wants of men. That form out of which the life and suitableness have departed should be as worthless in its eyes as the dead leaves that are falling around us.

No man has a right perception of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it, so as to be ready to be its martyr.

There is no eloquence without a man behind it.

It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make asally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration.

Worst, when this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and affection of human nature, by teaching that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife's thrift, and that woman's life has no other aim.