Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today. Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are.

The way to mend the bad world is to create the right world.

How much we forgive to those who yield us the rare spectacle of heroic manners! We will pardon them the want of books, or arts, and even of gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember them!

Read proudly--put the duty of being read invariably on the author. If he is not read, whose fault is it? I am quite ready to be charmed, but I shall not make-believe I am charmed.

In our fine arts, not imitation, but creation is the aim... The details, the prose of nature, he should omit, and give us only the spirit and splendour.

Black men built the railroads, not blue eyes.

You cannot make a cheap palace.