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.

Truth is too simple for us: we do not like those who unmask our illusions.

When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me,--when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no more. When I feel that we two meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged with the same hue, and do as it were run into one, why should I measure degrees of latitude, why should I count Egyptian years?

The poem is a confession of faith.

The domestic man, who loves no music so well as his kitchen clock, and the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has solaces which others never dream of.

Universally, the better gold the worse man. The political economist defies us to show any gold mine country that is traversed by good roads, or a shore where pearls are found on which good schools are erected.

Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done.