If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?.

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.

Great old books of the great old authors are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get his own belief.

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

O pure of heart! Thou needest not ask of me what this strong music in the soul may be!

To believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same things in different periods of growth.

Why aren't more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books aren't within everybody's reach.