A person seldom falls sick but the bystanders are animated with a faint hope that he will die.

A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape,I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep; and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.

When the Master of the universe has points to carry in his government he impresses his will in the structure of minds.

Cut these words and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive.

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

A poem is made up of thoughts, each of which filled the whole sky of the poet in its turn.

But the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace withoutgrandeur, and itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty,--which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders.