That genius is feeble which cannot hold its own before the masterpieces of the world.
How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year!
Noble discontent is the path to heaven. 
After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence.
In an audience of rough people a generous sentiment always brings down the house. In the tumult of war both sides applaud a heroic deed. 
In ancient Boeotia brides were carried home in vehicles whose wheels were burned at the door, in token, that they would never again be needed.
There is a noble and a base side to every history.
Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality.
The most fertile soil does not necessarily produce the most abundant harvest. It is the use we make of our faculties which renders them valuable. 
All ... religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the rest. 
Genius is lonely without the surrounding presence of a people to inspire it. 
The first wild-flower of the year is like land after sea. 
The bee himself did not evade the schoolboy more than she evaded me, and even at this day I still stand somewhat bewildered, like the boy. 
Travelers find virtue in a seeming minority in all other countries, and forget that they have left it in a minority at home. 
It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of Grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards. 
Life is as inexorable as the sea. 
What instruction the baby brings to the mother! 