“What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.”

“Whether one show one's self a man of genius in science or compose a song, the only point is, whether the thought, the discovery, the deed, is living and can live on.”

“A person hears only what they understand.”

“Duty is the demand of the hour.”

“He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.”

“Hither rolls the storm of heat;I feel its finer billows beatLike a sea which me infolds;Heat with viewless fingers moulds,Swells, and mellows, and matures,Paints, and flavors, and allures,Bird and brier inly warms,Still enriches and transforms,Gives the reed and lily length,Adds to oak and oxen strength,Transforming what it doth infold,Life out of death, new out of old.”

“What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period.”

“Old & New put their stamp to everything in Nature. The snowflake that is now falling is marked by both. The present moment gives the motion & the color of the flake: Antiquity, its form & properties. All things wear a luster which is the gift of the present & a tarnish of time.”