It has happened to me to meet many of the men of my day whom the world agreed to call great.

the New Englander landed on a stony, barren tract, and a large share of his strength during two centuries has gone to force a living out of it. Hence he has come to regard economy - a necessary unpleasant quality at best - as the chief of virtues. He has cultivated habits which verge on closeness in dealing with food, and with the expression of feeling, and even - his enemies think - with feeling itself.

War may be an armed angel with a mission, but she has the personal habits of the slums.

You will find the poet who wrings the heart of the world, or the foremost captain of his time, driving a bargain or paring a potato, just as you would do.

Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people has worked down, for good or evil; fermented, instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass.

America may have great poets and novelists, but she never will have more than one necromancer.

North and South were equally confident that God was on their side, and appealed incessantly to Him.