"Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue."

"Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors."

"It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature."

"The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master."

"The echoes of eternity remind us that the mind is a garden where thoughts are the seeds."

"No one can live entirely on their own, nor can any country or society exist in isolation."

"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world."

"The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live."