How indestructibly the good grows, and propagates itself, even among the weedy entanglements of evil.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.

The vulgarity of inanimate things requires time to get accustomed to; but living, breathing, bustling, plotting, planning, human vulgarity is a species of moral ipecacuanha, enough to destroy any comfort.

Dinners are defined as 'the ultimate act of communion;' men that can have communion in nothing else, can sympathetically eat together, can still rise into some glow of brotherhood over food and wine.

O thou who art able to write a book which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name conqueror or city-burner.

Without kindness there can be no true joy.

Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.