In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed of perfection.
Shut not your doors to me proud libraries.
All the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any.
I say no body of men are fit to make Presidents, judges and generals, unless they themselves supply the best specimens of the same; and that supplying one or two such specimens illuminates the whole body for a thousand years.
An individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make a superb nation.
When one reaches out to help another he touches the face of God.
The Americans, like the English, probably make love worse than any other race.
In all people I see myself – none more, and not one a barleycorn less; And the good or bad I say of myself, I say of them.
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
In nothing is there more evolution than the American mind.
To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim – the rocks – the motion of the waves – the ships, with men in them, what stranger miracles are there?
I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love.
All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain.
What beauty there is in words; what a lurking curious charm in the sound some words.
Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge and of the investigation of the depths of qualities and things.
How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!
To speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachable of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art.
I speak the password primeval; I give the sign of democracy.
O America! Because you build for mankind I build for you.
Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background, the countless minor scenes and interiors of the secession war; and it is best they should not. The real war will never get in the books.