Innovations To Which We Are Not Committed

The Most Comfortable Characteristic Of The Period [1775-1825], And The One Which Incites Our Deepest Envy, Is The Universal Willingness To Accept A Good Purpose As A Substitute For Good Work.

There Is Something Frightful In Being Required To Enjoy And Appreciate All Masterpieces; To Read With Equal Relish Milton, And Dante, And Calderon, And Goethe, And Homer, And Scott, And Voltaire, And Wordsworth, And Cervantes, And Molière, And Swift.

Our Belief In Education Is Unbounded, Our Reverence For It Is Unfaltering, Our Loyalty To It Is Unshaken By Reverses. Our Passionate Desire, Not So Much To Acquire It As To Bestow It, Is The Most Animated Of American Traits.

Discussion Without Asperity, Sympathy With Fusion, Gayety Unracked By Too Abundant Jests, Mental Ease In Approaching One Another; These Are The Things Which Give A Pleasant Smoothness To The Rough Edge Of Life.

The Least Practical Of Us Have Some Petty Thrift Dear To Our Hearts, Some One Direction In Which We Love To Scrimp.