The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers.

Reality is a sliding door.

It is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much, but I am my own comedy and tragedy.

When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,--muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public.

So all that is said of the wise man by Stoic or Oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own idea, describes his unattained but attainable self.