“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?”

“It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.”

“She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception.”

“I never had any preference for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing.”

“People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.”

“To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-ordered variety on the chord...”

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you...”