Quotes

Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.

There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy.

That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!

I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man.

The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.

We encourage a vicious indolence and inactivity, which we falsely call delicacy; instead of hardening their minds by the severer principles of reason and philosophy, we breed them to useless arts, which terminate in vanity and sensuality.

The possession of these treasures gave me extreme delight; I now continually studied and exercised my mind upon these histories, whilst my friends were employed in their ordinary occupations.

I love all writers whose minds, like Lowell's, bubble up in the sunshine of optimism--fountains of joy and good will, with occasionally a splash of anger and here and there a healing spray of sympathy and pity.

The thought that came up, came out—if not in the word, in the sound;—and as frequently in the one as in the other.

I learned, from the views of social life which it developed, to admire their virtues and to deprecate the vices of mankind.

You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.

We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent.

We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were.

It is certain that I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read, because what I read becomes the very substance and texture of my mind.

The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.

Through this work I obtained a cursory knowledge of history and a view of the several empires at present existing in the world; it gave me an insight into the manners, governments, and religions of the different nations of the earth.

The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

These little thoughts are the rustle of leaves; they have their whisper of joy in my mind.