"Thou art to me a delicious torment...." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.”

“The sensual man conforms thoughts to things;the poet conforms things to his thoughts.”

“If you would not be known to do anything, never do it.”

“Of all the violent passions, the one that becomes a woman best is love.”

“No, Father, I've a very different idea of love. And until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.”

“Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?”

“It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.”

“Some have courage in pleasures, and some in pains: some in desires, and some in fears, and some are cowards under the same conditions.”

“Whether we are in a pleasant or a painful state depends, finally, upon the kind of matter that pervades and engrosses our consciousness and what we compare it to - better and we envious and sad, worse and we feel grateful and happy.”