“What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.”

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it.

The thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never precisely in the way we have imagined to ourselves.

These gems have life in them: their colors speak, say what words fail of.

… it is one thing to like defiance, and another thing to like its consequences.

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

What are a handful of reasonable men against a crowd with stones in their hands?

Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?

An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.

I carry my unwritten poems in cipher on my face!

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us.

Enveloped in a common mist, we seem to walk in clearness ourselves, and behold only the mist that enshrouds others.

Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning.

It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.

The right to rebellion is the right to seek a higher rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness.

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.