I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

Our poets are men of talents who sing, and not the children of music.

Every wall is a door.

The whole of what we know is a system of compensation. Every defect in one manner is made up in another. Every suffering is rewarded; every sacrifice is made up; every debt is paid.

For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

When we see a special reformer we feel like asking him, What right have you, sir, to your own virtue? Is virtue piecemeal?