A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it

In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.

Everything about Florence seems to be coloured with a mild violet, like diluted wine.

There are few things more exciting to me, in short, than a psychological reason.

[of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones] [it is] like a vast episode in a sermon preached by a grandly humorous divine; and however we may be entertained by the way, we must not forget that our ultimate duty is to be instructed.

I haven't a creature to talk to...How in Boston, when the evening arrives, and I am tired of reading, and know it would be better to do something else, can I go to the theater? I have tried it, ad nauseam. Likewise calling. Upon whom?"

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 …