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.

If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular thing, and every thing, and every man.

The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics.

The best of life is conversation, and the greatest success is confidence, or perfect understanding between sincere people.

Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no can't in it, no excess of explanation, and it is full of suggestion, the raw material of possible poems and histories.

The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed, by, as a loss of power.

Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough for literature. - Ralph Waldo Emerson