Woe to him, . . . who has no court of appeal against the world's judgment.

It is part of my creed that the only poetry is history, could we tell it right.

The whole past is the procession of the present.

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

He who could foresee affairs three days in advance would be rich for thousands of years.

Taste, if it mean anything but a paltry connoisseurship, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness, a sense to discern, and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever, or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments they are to be seen. This surely implies, as its chief condition, not any given external rank or situation, but a finely-gifted mind, purified into harmony with itself, into keenness and justness of vision; above all, kindled into love and generous admiration.

In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.