“Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.”

Until you understand a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.

A great mind must be androgynous.

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

Silence does not always mark wisdom.

Democracy is the healthful lifeblood which circulates through the veins and arteries, which supports the system, but which ought never to appear externally, and as the mere blood itself.

There is in every human countenance either a history or a prophecy which must sadden, or at least soften every reflecting observer.

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

I never knew a trader in philanthropy who was not wrong in his head or heart somewhere or other.

A bitter and perplexed “What shall I do?” Is worse to man than worse necessity.

No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.

Real pain can alone cure us of imaginary ills.

How did the atheist get his idea of that God whom he denies?

That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.

We shall only differ in degree and not in kind,–just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of the materialists of all the schools, or almost all.

Oh, the difficulty of fixing the attention of men on the world within them!

Genius of the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power.

We need to find another way or another shape or an allegory or something that tells us more.