“Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names.”

“We are the sons of Sorrow; we are the poets and the prophets and the musicians.”

“Do not be merciful, but be just, for mercy is bestowed upon the guilty criminal, while Justice is all that the innocent man requires.”

“Inspiration is in seeing a part of the whole with the part of the whole in you.”

“The universe is my country and the human family is my tribe.”

“It now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears.”

“Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.”

“In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.”