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“ To know the politer Languages of the present Age, as a Native, and the greater Occurrences, and Periods of the Past, as an Historian, make up a Character, which is so obvious, that Every one will know where to apply it, except the Person, whose it really is: and if in this Your Royal Highness be at a Loss, I think it is the only thing within the Province of Your Sex You are ignorant of. ”

“ Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet? ”

“ When the ladies of the city hear that thou art to be present, they also will attend, and so wilt thou bring healing to her spirit, for now she is broken-hearted and has none to look to but God the Most High.” Then she wept and kissed my feet, repeating the following verses:
Thy presence honoureth us, and we Confess thy magnanimity:
If thou forsake us, there is none Can stand to us in stead of thee. ”

“ They all, jongleurs, preachers, theologians and men of letters repeat each other, for a tale once told is everyone’s property; the people repeat them; and so the stories circulate from lip to lip through the wide lands of Europe and down the echoing centuries. ”

“ For every day of the year there are thoughts, counsels, aspirations—many of them Oriental in tone, or patriarchal in spirit; there are delineations of nature, pure utterances of faith; each page contains fresh and earnest expressions of a poetic, believing, humane soul—often clad in exquisite language. ”

“ But where a reference is made to any thing in the economy of redemption, or any thing involving official acts or relations, official titles are introduced, or a phraseology is employed, by which the intended meaning is expressed. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are clearly distinguished, or their personality, relations and agency are indicated by the nature of the things recorded, or by the connections in which they occur. ”

“ They have reared the most glorious fabric that the wisdom of sages has ever conceived, and they have set it up here, a light to the whole world, and an asylum to the down-trodden and oppressed of every land. ”

“ Conversation of French circles seems to me like gambols of a thistledown, or the rainbow changes in soap-bubbles. One laughs with tears in one’s eyes. One moment confounded with the absolute childhood of the simplicity, in the next one is a little afraid of the keen edge of the shrewdness. ”

“ All this much—and with a full awareness of just how much it is—I am going to claim as literature and our province. Religion, I hold, every religion so far as it establishes and carries ideas, is literature, philosophy is literature, science is literature ”

“ Withal there is such dash and spirit, such mastery of language, such marvellous descriptive power, such subtle pauses and breaks, carrying echoes beyond the letter—as laid hold on men and women—specially on women—in a way that was new and strange. ”

“ Well, then, if the palingenistic aspects of the successive transformations of the spiritualized globe have struck, stirred, roused you, then, my dear sir, the 'Globe' newspaper,—noble name which proclaims its mission,—the 'Globe' is an organ, a guide, who will explain to you with the coming of each day the conditions under which this vast political and moral change will be effected. ”

“ We read with a smile of amusement and pity, the account of some provincial conjuror, who follows, with slight changes, the trade of the Witch of Endor; and we then compose our features to a grave expression of interest—for so society requires—to listen to some enlightened person's description of the latest novelties in table-turning or spirit-rapping ”

“ "I adore simple pleasures," said Lord Henry. "They are the last refuge of the complex. ”

“ To the man and his wife it seemed the one link that bound them to civilization—which spoke to them of the great world that they might else well forget. Through the windows they got many a lightning glance of that society they had left. ”

“ His phraseology rolls ever in solemn and majestic periods, in which every substantive marches ceremoniously accompanied by its epithet; grand pompous words peal like an organ; every proposition is set forth balanced by a proposition of equal length; thought is developed with the compressed regularity and official splendour of a procession. ”

“ "Why, I travel with a staff, my dear, as you perceive: and it suffices me."
"Certainly it is large enough, in all conscience. ”

“ Language!—the blood of the soul, Sir! into which our thoughts run and out of which they grow! ”

“ Sir, he who sees these states now revolving in harmony around a common center, and expects to see them quit their places and fly off without convulsion, may look the next hour to see the heavenly bodies rush from their spheres, and jostle against each other in the realms of space, without causing the crush of the universe. ”

“ Like summer lightning, French wit flashes frequently, brightly and innocuously, leaving nothing disagreeable to remind one of its having appeared. Conversation is, with the French, the aim and object of society. ”

“ Poets should be lawgivers; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead, the civil code, and the day's work. ”

“ For Los said: When the Individual appropriates Universality
He divides into Male & Female: & when the Male & Female,
Appropriate Individuality, they become an Eternal Death.
55 Hermaphroditic worshippers of a God of cruelty & law!
Your Slaves & Captives; you compell to worship a God of Mercy.
These are the Demonstrations of Los, & the blows of my mighty Hammer
So Los spoke. ”

“ A Nation spoke to a Nation,
⁠A Queen sent word to a Throne:
"Daughter am I in my mother's house,
⁠But mistress in my own.
The gates are mine to open,
⁠As the gates are mine to close,
And I set my house in order,"
⁠Said our Lady of the Snows. ”

“ Every one who understands the language, and has mixed much in society, must have made the same observations.—See two Frenchmen at a distance, and the vehemence of their action, and the expression of their features, shall make you conclude they are discussing some subject, which not only interests, but delights them. ”

“ All the refinements of the most consummate civilisation in the world, all its airy cynicism, all its laughing urbanity, all its whimsical friendliness, seem to concentrate themselves and reach their climax on every page of his books.
A delicate odour of incense and mockery, an odour of consecrated wine and a savour of heathen wit, rise up together from every sentence and disarm us with the insidiousness of their pleasant contrast. ”

“ We go on to the third Appendix in two sections, being the fifth and sixth 'wings,' and forming what is called 'The Great Treatise.' It will appear singular to the reader, as it has always done to myself, that neither in the Text, nor in the first two Appendixes, does the character called Yî, which gives its name to the classic, once appear. ”

“ If in England the expression vers de société carries with it more literary dignity, this is mainly due to the genius of one man. Prior’s Poems on Several Occasions, collected in 1709, presents us with some of the earliest entirely characteristic specimens of vers de société, arid with some of the best. ”

“ The Heart is the Capital of the Mind —
The Mind is a single State —
The Heart and the Mind together make
A single Continent —
One — is the Population —
Numerous enough —
This ecstatic Nation
Seek — it is Yourself. ”

“ In the last stage of civilization, poetry, religion, and philosophy will be one, and there are glimpses of this truth in the first. ”

“ The orators, the poets, the commanders encroach on us only as fair women do, by our allowance and homage. Slight them by preoccupation of mind, slight them, as you can well afford to do, by high and universal aims, and they instantly feel that you have right, and that it is in lower places that they must shine. They also feel your right; for they with you are open to the influx of the all-knowing Spirit, which annihilates before its broad noon the little shades and gradations of intelligence in the compositions we call wiser and wisest. ”

“ For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead. ”

“ Thou unassuming Common-place
Of Nature, with that homely face,
And yet with something of a grace,
Which Love makes for thee! ”

“ The lessons given by the first philosophers to men, the first laws, the most ancient systems, all were written in verse; whilst the fancy of the poets, the flattering pictures and pomp of rites, which they invented, interrupted, with a pleasing and necessary relaxation, the fatigue of rural labours. ”

“ If we read even a few pages of "La Cité des Dames,"—and how delightfully modern is the very title!—we recognize the same familiar sentiments, albeit disguised in archaic language and with many old-time conceits, that we are accustomed to hearing every day. ”

“ Of what import to thy immensity, their distinctions of parties and sects? And of what concern the subtleties with which their folly torments itself?
And you, credulous men, show me the effect of your practices! In so many centuries, during which you have been following or altering them, what changes have your prescriptions wrought in the laws of nature? Is the sun brighter? Is the course of the seasons varied? Is the earth more fruitful, or its inhabitants more happy? If God be good, can your penances please him? If infinite, can your homage add to his glory? ”

“ Great Men are the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History; ”

“ There is much that is trivial, commonplace, and prosaic in these productions of the common people, but now and then one comes upon a phrase, a verse, or a whole poem which shows strength or grace or pathos. ”

“ But when any class of complex objects becomes the subject of conversation, of which I have seen many individuals, as a castle or an army, some property or circumstance belonging to it is peculiarly alluded to ”

“ In like manner, that sect, one of whose most striking characteristics is a beautiful simplicity of dialect, served to check that strain of servile flattery and Gothic compliment so prevalent in the same period, and to keep up some idea of that manly plainness with which one human being ought to address another. ”

“ The first branch, of which Rule, containeth the first, and Fundamentall Law of Nature; which is, "To seek Peace, and follow it." ”

“ Lord C—by, coming out of the House of Lords one day, called out, Where’s my fellow? Not in England, said a gentleman who stood by.
46. A beggar asking alms under the name of a poor scholar, a gentleman to whom he applied himself asked him a question in Latin; the fellow, shaking his head, said, he did not understand him. Why, said the gentleman, did you not say you were a poor scholar? Yes, replied the other, a poor one indeed, sir, for I do not understand one word of Latin. ”

“ The contributions to The Offering were on a great variety of subjects. There were allegories, poems, conversations on physiology, astronomy, and other scientific subjects, dissertations on poetry, and on the beauties of nature, didactic [115] pieces on highly moral and religious subjects, translations from French and Latin, stories of factory and other life, sketches of local New England history, and sometimes the chapters of a novel. ”

“ Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. ”

“ Objects and acts of the highest sanctity in one country may be regarded as low and vulgar in another—the standard varies from class to class, from one occupation to another; almost from family to family. ”

“ When I divide the dis course into heads, or mention any particulars which I wish to impress upon the attention, or endeavour to clear up a difficulty, or enforce a truth by some familiar local illustration, I ascertain for myself, by questioning each class of people in succession, whether they understand, and are likely to carry home, the lessons they have been taught. ”

“ Travels, history, biography, autobiographical fragments, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and—to no small degree—fiction, with its stories of out-of-the-way places and out-of-the-way peoples and of unfamiliar classes,—all have been thoroughfares for the social consciousness here. ”