The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics.

Wise cultivated, genial conversation is the last flower of civilization, and the best result which life has to offer us,--a cup for gods, which has no repentance. Conversation is our account of ourselves. All we have, all we can, all we know, is brought into play, and as the reproduction in finer form, of all our havings.

Instead of feeling a poverty when we encounter a great man, let us treat the new comer like a travelling geologist, who passes through our estate, and shows us good slate, or limestone, or anthracite, in our brush pasture.

Good churches are not built by bad men; at least, there must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in the society. These minsters were neither built nor filled by atheists.

Government has been a fossil: it should be a plant.

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

We sometimes meet an original gentleman, who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them.