Much of the wisdom of the world is not wisdom, and the most illuminated class of men are no doubt superior to literary fame, and are not writers.

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.

There are faces so fluid with expression, so flushed and rippled by the play of thought, that we can hardly find what the mere features really are. When the delicious beauty of lineament loses its power, it is because a more delicious beauty has appeared, that an interior and durable form has been disclosed.

Cowardice shuts the eyes till the sky is not larger than a calf-skin: shuts the eyes so that we cannot see the horse that is running away with us; worse, shuts the eyes of the mind and chills the heart.

Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?

An individual is an encloser. Time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought, are left at large no longer.

There is genius as well in virtue as in intellect. 'Tis the doctrine of faith over works.