Critic Quotes

“The sky is the ultimate art gallery just above us.”

“Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.”

“Earth's a howling wilderness,Truculent with fraud and force.”

“We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be the shadow of his beloved; time, which keeps her from him, is his chest; the suspicion she has awakened, is her ornament”

“The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy,--more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men.”

“Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. Ghostlike we glide through nature, and should not know our place again.”

“The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life,--life passed through the fire of thought.”

“I remember the thought which occurred to me when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to America, was, Have you been victimized in being brought hither?--or, prior to that, answer me this, "Are you victimizable?”

“The eye of prudence may never shut.”

“We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues.”

“Thy dangerous glancesmake women of men;new-born, we are meltinginto nature again.”

“The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitants of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics.”

“The world leaves no track in space, and the greatest action of man no mark in the vast idea.”

“Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year.”

“Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.”

“The cannon will not suffer any other sound to be heard for miles and for years around it.”

“Self-command is the main elegance.”

“In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.”

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

“The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.”

“Persecution readily knits friendship between its victims.”

“The kitchen clock is more convenient than sidereal time. We must use the popular category, as we do by the Linnæan classification, for convenience, and not as exact and final. Otherwise, we are presently confounded, when the best-settled traits of one race are claimed by some new ethnologist as precisely characteristic of the rival tribe.”

“A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word. Every opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a threadball thrown at a mark, but the other end remains on the thrower”

“Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena.”

“Evermore in the world is this marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.”