I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, - "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, 'They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live then from the devil.'

Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded.

Not gold, but only man can make a people great and strong; men who, for truth and honor's sake, stand fast and suffer long.

Then, though I prize my friends, I cannot afford to talk with them and study their visions, lest I lose my own. It would indeed give me a certain household joy to quit this lofty seeking, this spiritual astronomy, or search of stars, and come down to warm sympathies with you; but then I know well I shall mourn always the vanishing of my mighty gods.

All history is but the lengthened shadow of a great man.

Many times the reading of a book has made the future of a man.