We know that madness belongs to love, – what power to paint a vile object in hues of heaven.
As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action.
Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious.
Unhappily, no man exists who has not in his own person become, to some amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a share in the expiation.
A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope and eloquence in all whom she approaches.
Worst, when this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and affection of human nature, by teaching that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife’s thrift, and that woman’s life has no other aim.
England produces under favorable conditions of ease and culture the finest women in the world. And, as the men are affectionate and true-hearted, the women inspire and refine them.
The saint and poet seek privacy to ends the most public and universal: and it is the secret of culture, to interest the man more in his public, than in his private quality.
Keep the town for occasions, but the habits should be formed in retirement.
The solitary knows the essence of the thought, the scholar in society only its fair face.
But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation.
My doom and my strength is to be solitary.
Solitude is impractical, and society fatal. We must keep our head in the one and our hands in the other. The conditions are met, if we keep our independence, yet do not lose our sympathy.
Yet some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise, and wherever the vein of thought reaches down into the profound, there is no danger from vanity. Solemn friends will warn them of the danger of the head’s being turned by the flourish of trumpets, but they can afford to smile.
I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies.
The most attractive class of people are those who are powerful obliquely, and not by the direct stroke: men of genius, but not yetaccredited: one gets the cheer of their light, without paying too great a tax.
Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are the literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily.
We must not inquire too curiously into the absolute value of literature. Enough that it amuses and exercises us. At least it leaves us where we were. It names things, but does not add things.
Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class.
The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man.