The act of praying is the very highest energy of which the human mind is capable; praying, that is, with the total concentration of the faculties. The great mass of worldly men and of learned men are absolutely incapable of prayer.

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.

Poetry gives most pleasure when only generally and not perfectly understood.

The history of all the world tells us that immoral means will ever intercept good ends.

A woman in a single state may be happy and may be miserable; but most happy, most miserable, these are epithets belonging to a wife.

How strange and awful is the synthesis of life and death in the gusty winds and falling leaves of an autumnal day!

The artist must imitate that which is within the thing, that which is active through form and figure, and discourses to us by symbols.