The purity of the critical ermine, like that of the judicial, is often soiled by contact with politics. - Edwin Percy Whipple

The contemplation of beauty in nature, in art, in literature, in human character, diffuses through our being a soothing and subtle joy, by which the heart's anxious and aching cares are softly smiled away.

A large proportion of human beings live not so much in themselves as in what they desire to be. They create what is called an ideal character, in an ideal form, whose perfections compensate in some degree for the imperfections of their own.

Nothing is rarer than the use of a word in its exact meaning.