Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.

"It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans."

Longfellow is to poetry what the barrel-organ is to music.

Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.

"The instructed man is ashamed to pronounce in an Orphic manner what everybody knows, and because he is silent people think he is making fun of them."