If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

Dreams have a poetic integrity and truth. This limbo and dust-hole of thought is presided over by a certain reason, too.

The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

But in every constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher qualities of the art.

When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with His presence.

Nothing is dead: men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out ofthe window, sound and well, in some new and strange disguise.

Don't choose the better person, choose the person who makes a better you.