"Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands."

"For the prevision is allied Unto the thing so signified; Or say, the foresight that awaits Is the same Genius that creates."

"Deep in the man sits fast his fate To mould his fortunes, mean or great."

"Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill."

"He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread."

"Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There's no god dare wrong a worm."

"Born for success he seemed, With grace to win, with heart to hold, With shining gifts that took all eyes."

"Nor mourn the unalterable Days That Genius goes and Folly stays."

"England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame."

"Whoever fights, whoever falls, Justice conquers evermore."

"So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can."

"I think no virtue goes with size; The reason of all cowardice Is, that men are overgrown, And, to be valiant, must come down To the titmouse dimension."

"United States! the ages plead, — Present and Past in under-song, — Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue."

"O tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire; One morn is in the mighty heaven, And one in our desire."

"None shall rule but the humble, And none but Toil shall have."

"To-day unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound!"

"God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor."

"The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives."

"The key to the period appeared to be that the mind had become aware of itself. Men grew reflective and intellectual. There was a new consciousness. The former generations acted under the belief that a shining social prosperity was the beatitude of man, and sacrificed uniformly the citizen to the State. The modern mind believed that the nation existed for the individual, for the guardianship and education of every man. This idea, roughly written in revolutions and national movements, in the mind of the philosopher had far more precision; the individual is the world. This perception is a sword such as was never drawn before. It divides and detaches bone and marrow, soul and body, yea, almost the man from himself. It is the age of severance, of dissociation, of freedom, of analysis, of detachment. Every man for himself. The public speaker disclaims speaking for any other; he answers only for himself. The social sentiments are weak; the sentiment of patriotism is weak; veneration is low; the natural affections feebler than they were. People grow philosophical about native land and parents and. relations. There is an universal resistance to ties rand ligaments once supposed essential to civil society. The new race is stiff, heady and rebellious; they are fanatics in freedom; they hate tolls, taxes, turnpikes, banks, hierarchies, governors, yea, almost laws. They have a neck of unspeakable tenderness; it winces at a hair. They rebel against theological as against political dogmas; against mediation, or saints, or any nobility in the unseen. The age tends to solitude. The association of the time is accidental and momentary and hypocritical, the detachment intrinsic and progressive. The association is for power, merely, — for means; the end being the enlargement and independency of the individual."

"There are always two parties, the party of the Past and the party of the Future: the Establishment and the Movement. At times the resistance is reanimated, the schism runs under the world and appears in Literature, Philosophy, Church, State and social customs."

"Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others."

"The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye."

"'Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence."

"The highest compact we can make with our fellow, is, — "Let there be truth between us two forevermore"."

"Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others, and this is a gift interred only by the self."

"There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, — now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned."

"I find men victims of illusion in all parts of life. Children, youths, adults, and old men, all are led by one bawble or another. Yoganidra, the goddess of illusion, Proteus, or Momus, or Gylfi's Mocking, — for the Power has many names, — is stronger than the Titans, stronger than Apollo."

"Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth."

"All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle."

"If I could put my hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful? The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it, the beauty forsakes all the near water. For the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at the same time."

"Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful."

"Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait."

"Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better."

"Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them."

"Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live."

"Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any."

"Bad times have a scientific value. [...] We learn geology the morning after the earthquake, on ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains, upheaved plains, and the dry bed of the sea."

"Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can."

"I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant."

"People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character."

"Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances...Strong men believe in cause and effect."

"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."

"We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples."

"The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war."

"The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later."

"I am not much an advocate for travelling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home? I have been quoted as saying captious things about travel; but I mean to do justice. .... He that does not fill a place at home, cannot abroad. He only goes there to hide his insignificance in a larger crowd. You do not think you will find anything there which you have not seen at home? The stuff of all countries is just the same. Do you suppose there is any country where they do not scald milk-pans, and swaddle the infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish? What is true anywhere is true everywhere. And let him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth as he carries."