To the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow.

No mortal has a right to wag his tongue, much less to wag his pen, without saying something.

He that works and does some Poem, not he that merely says one, is worthy of the name of Poet.

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given.

Generations are as the days of toilsome mankind; death and birth are the vesper and the matin bells that summon mankind to sleep and to rise refreshed for new advancement. What the father has made, the son can make and enjoy; but has also work of his own appointed him. Thus all things wax and roll onwards: arts, establishments, opinions, nothing is ever completed, but ever completing.

Beautiful it is, and a gleam from the same eternal pole-star visible amid the destinies of men, that all talent, all intellect, is in the first plane moral. What a world were this otherwise!

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.