He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.

My eyes make pictures when they are shut.

An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches with spire steeples which point as with a silent finger to the sky and stars.

Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium. Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are, the more necessary it is to be plain.

A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.

Rage is essentially vulgar.

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole, its body brevity, and wit its soul.