“We are not of the same kind as beasts, and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of the soul within us that makes the difference.”

Friendship is a sheltering tree.

I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.

Persecution is a very easy form of virtue.

In the deepest night of trouble and sorrow God gives us so much to be thankful for that we need never cease our singing.

There are errors which no wise man will treat with rudeness while there is a probability that they may be the refraction of some great truth still below the horizon.

This world has angels all too few, and heaven is overflowing.

The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity.

Summer has set in with its usual severity.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. For what is enthusiasm but the oblivion and swallowing-up of self in an object dearer than self?

All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.

The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.

Our own heart, and not other men’s opinion, forms our true honor.

Clergymen who publish pious frauds in the interest of the church are the orthodox liars of God.

Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.

He who begins by loving Christianity more than Truth, will proceed by loving his sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.

The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive.