Never tire yourself more than necessary, even if you have to found a culture on the fatigue of your bones.
Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.
For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity.
A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.
Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.
