Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.

Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to village theologies, which preach an election or favoritism.

Much of the wisdom of the world is not wisdom, and the most illuminated class of men are no doubt superior to literary fame, and are not writers.

Great country, diminutive minds. America is formless, has no terrible and no beautiful condensation.

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

I now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple, and all great pictures are.

Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree.