The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it....we see literature best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field cannot be well seen from within the field.

I read your piece on Plato. Holmes, when you strike at a king, you must kill him.

The poisons are our principal medicines, which kill the disease and save the life.

It is the property of the religious spirit to be the most refining of all influences. No external advantages, no culture of the tastes, no habit of command, no association with the elegant, or even depth of affection, can bestow that delicacy and that grandeur of bearing which belong only to the mind accustomed to celestial conversation,--all else is but gilt and cosmetics, beside this, as expressed in every look and gesture.

Under every deep a lower deep opens.

Sugar is not so sweet to the palate as sound to the healthy ear.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.