Alas for America as I must so often say, the ungirt, the diffuse, the profuse, procumbent, one wide ground juniper, out of which no cedar, no oak will rear up a mast to the clouds! It all runs to leaves, to suckers, to tendrils, to miscellany. The air is loaded with poppy, with imbecility, with dispersion, & sloth.

The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage.

There is a crack in everything God has made

Nothing great ever happened without enthusiasm.

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I'm not afraid of falling into my inkpot.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.

Out of sleeping a waking, Out of waking a sleep.