Various

“ The Quaker dress is imperceptibly and gracefully melting away into a refined simplicity of modern costume, which in many cases seems to be the perfection of taste. The obvious reflection, that one color of the rainbow is quite as much of God as another, has led the children of gentle dove-colored mothers to appear in shades of rose-color, blue, and lilac; and wise elders have said, it is not so much the color or the shape that we object to, as giving too much time and too much money,—if the heart is right with God and man, the bonnet ribbon may be of any shade you please. ”

“ Be assured that in the long run no man, no writer, above all no poet, will preserve his secret." "It is by virtue of an exquisite analogy that the word 'taste' has prevailed over the word 'judgment.' Judgment! I know minds which possess it in a high degree, but which are yet wanting in taste; for taste expresses what is finest and most instinctive in an organ which is at once the most delicate and the most complex." "To know how to read a book, judging it as we go along, but never ceasing to taste it,—in this consists almost the whole art of criticism." ”

“ It is a necessity of nature for valleys to lie beneath the lofty mountain peaks that daringly pierce the sky; and it would seem as though the artist-temperament, after rising to sublime heights of ecstasy, plunged into corresponding depths, showing thereby the supremacy of the man over the god. Then is there much sighing and shaking of heads at the failings of genius, whereas genius in its depths sinks no lower than the ordinary level of mankind. It simply proves its title-deeds to mortality. Humanity at best is weak, and can only be divine by flashes. ”

“ And, finally, is the President to be supported because he is the champion of conciliation and peace? Congress believes that his conciliation is the compromise of vital principles; that his peace is the surrender of human rights; that his plan but postpones the operation of causes of discord it fails to eradicate; and that, if the war has taught us nothing else, it has taught us this,—spreading it out indeed before all eyes in letters of fire and blood,—that no conciliation is possible which sacrifices the defenceless, and that no peace is permanent which is unfounded in justice. ”

“ Is it not the charm of life that nothing is final,—not even death itself? In this strange existence, with its great and rapid transitions, happy events are always imminent. One may be performing her own menialities to-day, and to-morrow, in an ambassador's carriage, be folded in a fur robe with couchant lions upon it; to-day be quartered in a single attic, to-morrow be treading the tapestries of her own drawing-rooms. Thus the golden Fate turns and keeps turning; it is only when, through frigidness or fear, we refuse to revolve with it, that there ensues the discord of despair. ”

“ There must be somebody whose mission it is to preside over the agreeable arts of life; and I suppose it falls to 'us girls.' That's the way I comfort myself, at all events. Then I must confess that I do like dress; I'm not cultivated enough to be a painter or a poet, and I have all my artistic nature, such as it is, in dress. I love harmonies of color, exact shades and matches; I love to see a uniform idea carried all through a woman's toilet,—her dress, her bonnet, her gloves, her shoes, her pocket-handkerchief and cuffs, her very parasol, all in correspondence. ”

“ Let us not confound dignity with mere loftiness. Moreover, by the side of dignity let us never forget that other inspiring sentiment, which is at least its equal in value, humanity; that is to say, the remembrance, the care, of that great number who are condemned to a life of poverty and suffering, and whose precarious condition will not endure those obstacles, retardments, and delays that belong to every plan of amelioration founded on agitation and a conflict of systems and ideas. I am far from imputing to the worshippers of liberty a disregard of this humane and generous feeling. ”

“ A man tries to be happy in love; he cannot sincerely give his heart, and the affair seems all a dream. In domestic life, the same; in politics, a seeming patriot; but still he is sincere, and all seems like a theatre.
An old man, on a summer day, sits on a hill-top, or on the observatory of his house, and sees the sunshine pass from one object to another connected with the events of his past life,—as the school-house, the place where his wife lived in her maidenhood,—its setting beams falling on the churchyard. ”

“ Thus it goes in France; and in England, virtuous and domestic princesses and peeresses must take obediently what has been decreed by their rulers in the demi-monde of France; and we in America have leaders of fashion, who make it their pride and glory to turn New York into Paris, and to keep even step with everything that is going on there. So the whole world of womankind is marching under the command of these leaders. The love of dress and glitter and fashion is getting to be a morbid, unhealthy epidemic, which really eats away the nobleness and purity of women. ”

“ While on the little island of Barbadoes, which is flat and comparatively destitute of natural beauty, the inhabitant is proud to the verge of the ludicrous of his home, the Jamaican, dwelling amid scenes of perpetual loveliness, despises his native soil. And not without reason. For Jamaica presents that saddest and least flattering sight, a land sinking into hopeless ruin. Her plantations are left uncultivated. Her cities look time-worn and crumbling. Her fields, which once blossomed like the rose, are relapsing into the wilderness. She does not feed her people. ”

“ How is it that our own language offers no such example? How is it that the English literature of the present century, superior to that of France in so many departments, richer therefore in the material of criticism, has nothing to show in this way, we will not say equal, but—taking quantity as well as quality into the account—in any degree similar? How is it that nothing has been written on the highest minds and chief productions of the day—on Tennyson, on Thackeray, on Carlyle—which is worth preserving or remembering? ”

“ We are always excessive when we sacrifice the higher beauty to attain the lower one. A woman who will sacrifice domestic affection, conscience, self-respect, honor, to love of dress, we all agree, loves dress too much. She loses the true and higher beauty of womanhood for the lower beauty of gems and flowers and colors. A girl who sacrifices to dress all her time, all her strength, all her money, to the neglect of the cultivation of her mind and heart, and to the neglect of the claims of others on her helpfulness, is sacrificing the higher to the lower beauty. ”

“ She hints as much to the Doctor, who, in view of his recent communication from Maverick, will not gainsay her.
When she moved away at last, as if for a leave-taking, silent and humiliated, the old man said to her, "My child, are you not still my Adaly? God is no respecter of persons; his ministers should be like him."
Whereupon Adèle came and kissed him with a warmth that reminded him of days long past.
She rejoiced in not having encountered the gray, keen eyes of the spinster. She knew they would read unfailingly the whole extent of the revelation that had dawned upon her. ”

“ Gaunt got into her carriage and went home, thinking all the way. What she had heard filled her with feelings strangely but sweetly composed of veneration and pity. In that Leonard was a great orator and a high-minded priest, she revered him; in that he was solitary and sad, she pitied him; in that he wanted common sense, she felt like a mother, and must take him under her wing. All true women love to protect; perhaps it is a part of the great maternal element: but to protect a man, and yet look up to him, this is delicious. It satisfies their double craving ”

“ Conspicuous near, the horizon was the "Milk Dipper" of Sagittarius, and I instantly noticed, with a thrill of intense surprise, that the planet Mars was missing! When I had first awakened, and stepped out of the grove, I had only a dim remembrance in my mind of having rambled in the fields and fallen asleep on the grass; but this planet missing in the constellation Sagittarius recalled to me at once my miraculous position on the planet Mars. Here was a confirmation unexpected and irrefragable of the truth of what Copernicus had written by my hand. ”

“ If but half the genius were diverted from office-getting to house-building, what towering results! But since it is the misery of a republic that politics is supreme, and that a people who govern themselves can have little leisure for anything else, I have sometimes feared that the only way to get these woman questions through is by tacking them on to politics. If, then, any of our masculine friends now go to Congress on an amelioration of labor, Heaven speed the day when they can only go on an amelioration of lodgings. ”

“ If a question were put to us in a general way, Which is the better for a people, self-government, full discussion, decisions in accordance with good sense, and submitted to by all—or government by one, however able?—it would be only too easy to decide. But the practical question is, Given such a nation, with such a character, with such a history, in such a position,—does it, can it, wish to govern itself by itself? would not the end be anarchy? We talk of principles; let us not leave out of sight France, which is for us the first and most sacred of principles. ”

“ But admitting the worst charges, any one who remembers the New York riot of 1863 will be slow to assert that this black mob exhibited any barbarity which has not been more than emulated by white mobs. Shocking enough the details are; but human action always and with every race is ferocious, when once the restraints of self-control and the law are thrown off.
With a people so excitable as the blacks of Jamaica, and among whom there existed so many causes of disaffection, the greatest promptitude of action was a virtue. ”

“ The little boy of the house, when he has made out the visitor by a few furtive peeps from behind the mother's chair, comes to her fawningly and familiarly; and as Adèle looks into his bright, fearless eyes, a new courage seems to possess her. God's children, all of us; and He careth even for the sparrows. She will conquer her despairing weakness; she will accept her cross and bear it resolutely. By slow degrees she is won over by the frolicsome humor of the curly-pated boy, who never once quits her side, into cheerful prattle with him. ”

“ We believe with M. Scherer in the animating forces of liberty, in its activity and power as an essential principle of progress and civilization. That the combination may exist is attested by such examples as William of Orange, Count Cavour, Abraham Lincoln.
It all comes, therefore, to this single inquiry: Is the present ruler of France a great man, a hero? Is he the enlightened leader whom a nation may and confidently follow? Has he the genius and the will to solve the problem before him, to reconcile liberty with authority? Posterity alone will be able to pronounce with unanimity. ”

“ I love that criticism should be an emanation from the book." "Whenever I speak of a writer, I prefer to exhibit him in the brightest and happiest hour of his talent, to place him, if possible, directly under the rays." "The greatest triumph of criticism is when it recognizes the arrival of a power, the advent of a genius." "I cannot admit that the best mode of correcting a talent which is in process of development is to begin by throwing an inkstand at its head." ”

“ To ride in that carriage! with the Waldoborough herself! with the driver before and the footman behind, in livery! O ye gods!
"I was abandoned to intoxicating dreams of ambition, whilst Madam went to prepare herself, and Mademoiselle to order the carriage. It was not long before I heard a vehicle enter the court-yard, turn, and stop in the carriage-way, I tried to catch a glimpse of it from the window, but saw it only in imagination,—that barouche of barouches, which is Waldoborough's! ”

“ Only resolve that you will put the true beauty first,—that, even if you do have to seem unfashionable, you will follow the highest beauty of womanhood,—and the battle is half gained. Only resolve that your time, your strength, your money, such as you have, shall not all—nor more than half—be given to mere outward adornment, and you will go right. It requires only an army of girls animated with this noble purpose to declare independence in America, and emancipate us from the decrees and tyrannies of French actresses and ballet-dancers. ”

“ Consider, then, the real condition of affairs,—three hundred and fifty thousand blacks, a large share of them children or grandchildren of those who were brought from Africa, with the wild blood of their fathers scarcely diluted in their veins, with all the old traditions of Fetichism and Obi worship fresh in their minds, altogether uneducated, or at best half educated; consider what virgin soil is here for every vile superstition, what a field for the demagogue to cultivate, and then decide whether it might not be safer, after all, to educate the negro in Jamaica. ”

“ Though North America were submerged to-morrow, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans rushing over our buried hopes to a riotous embrace, republicanism would live as long as the elements endure,—borne on every wind, inhaled in every breath of air, abiding its opportunity to become an active principle. Absorbed in our own peculiar form of egotism, we believe that a Supreme Being has cast the cause of humanity upon one die, to prosper or perish by the chances of our game. ”