The highest Beauty should be plain set.

What is addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten us, but makes us intellectual beings.

The flowering of civilization is the finished man, the man of sense, of grace, of accomplishment, of social power--the gentleman.

Good criticism is very rare and always precious.

Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes.

There comes a period of the imagination to each--a later youth--the power of beauty, the power of looks, of poetry.

He only is a well-made man who has a good determination. And the end of culture is not to destroy this, God forbid! but to train away all impediment and mixture and leave nothing but pure power.