The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

Time has only a relative existence.

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.

We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.