If A Man Sits Down To Think,

I Have Been Told By Persons Of Experience In Matters Of Taste, That The Fashions Follow A Law Of Gradation, And Are Never Arbitrary. The New Mode Is Always Only A Step Onward In The Same Direction As The Last Mode; And A Cultivated Eye Is Prepared For And Predicts The New Fashion.

One Single Idea May Have Greater Weight Than All The Men, Animals, And Machines For A Century.

Traveling Is A Fool's Paradise. Our First Journeys Discover To Us The Indifference Of Places. At Home I Dream That At Naples, At Rome, I Can Be Intoxicated With Beauty, And Lose My Sadness. I Pack My Trunk, Embrace My Friends, Embark On The Sea, And At Last Wake Up In Naples, And There Beside Me Is The Stern Fact, The Sad Self, Unrelenting, Identical, That I Fled From. I Seek The Vatican, And The Palaces. I Affect To Be Intoxicated With Sights And Suggestions, But I Am Not Intoxicated. My Giant Goes With Me Wherever I Go.

When At Last In A Race A New Principle Appears, An Idea--that Conserves It; Ideas Only Save Races.

Every Body We Know Surrounds Himself With A Fine House, Fine Books, Conservatory, Gardens, Equipage, And All Manner Of Toys, As Screens To Interpose Between Himself And His Guest. Does It Not Seem As If Man Was Of A Very Sly, Elusive Nature, And Dreaded Nothing So Much As A Full Rencontre Front To Front With His Fellow?