From Washington, proverbially "the city of distances," through all its cities, states, and territories, it is a country of beginnings, of projects, of designs, and expectations.

The population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from the work of art of human character, — a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes.

Aristotle and Plato are reckoned the respective heads of two schools. A wise man will see that Aristotle platonizes.

The imaginative faculty of the soul must be fed with objects immense and eternal.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.