Not the poem which we have read , but that to which we return , with the greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power, and claims the name of essential poetry .
If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil . He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.
Great old books of the great old authors are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get his own belief.
The water-lily, in the midst of waters, opens its leaves and expands its petals, at the first pattering of the shower, and rejoices in the rain-drops with a quicker sympathy than the packed shrubs in the sandy desert.
In wonder all philosophy began, in wonder it ends, and admiration fill up the interspace; but the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance, the last is the parent of adoration.
The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.
There are three classes into which all the women past seventy that ever I knew were to be divided: 1. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That old witch.