At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish.

You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succor his flagging spirits by opium or wine, his work will characterize itself as the effect of opium or wine. If you make a picture or a statue, it sets the beholder in that state of mind you had when you made it. If you spend for show, on building, or gardening, or on pictures, or on equipages, it will so appear. We are all physiognomists and penetrators of character, and things themselves are detective.

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.

A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.

Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and word, the intimated purpose, express character.

Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet.

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.