“Poetry, which brings together or separates, which fortifies or brings anguish, which shores up or demolishes souls, which gives or robs men of faith and vigor, is more necessary to a people than industry itself, for industry provides them with a means of subsistence, while literature gives them the desire and strength for life.”

“Every society brings to literature its own form of expression, and the history of the nations can be told with greater truth by the stages of literature than by chronicles and decades.”

“Where will a race of men go when they have lost the habit of thinking with faith about the scope and meaning of their actions? The best among them, those who consecrate Nature with their sacred desire for the future, will lose, in a sordid and painful annihilation, all stimulus to alleviate the ugliness of humanity.”

“Listen to the song of this hardworking and satisfied nation; listen to Walt Whitman. The exercise of himself exalts him to majesty, tolerance exalts him to justice, and order to joy.”