The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.

If we shall take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures.

An actually existing fly is more important than a possibly existing angel.

Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think, and those who cause others to think.

Come out of the azure. Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of your landscape.

Things bring their own philosophy with them, that is, prudence.

It seems as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, she had turned out five or six men, as Homer, Phidias, Menu, and Columbus, was no wise discontented with the result. These samples attested the virtue of the tree.