The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold

The world is so beautiful that I can hardly believe it exists.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

Freedom is not the right to do as you please, but the liberty to do as you should.

I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, mettle and bottom.

All things with which we deal preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,--it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields.