A man must be clothed with society, or we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty, as of a displaced and unfurnished member. He is to be dressed in arts and institutions, as well as in body garments. Now and then a man exquisitely made can live alone, and must; but coop up most men and you undo them.

The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.

I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth.

Foolish consistencies are the hobgoblins of small minds!

There is a genius of a nation, which is not to be found in the numerical citizens, but which characterizes the society.

How much better when the whole land is a garden, and the people have grown up in the bowers of a paradise.

Any work looks wonderful to me except the one which I can do.