"These are matters of external history. They are indeed prominent objects, often changing and giving a new direction to the current; but they tell us not why it flows onward and will ever flow."

"As long as man labors for a physical existence, though an act of necessity almost, he is yet natural; it is life, though that of this world, for which he instinctively works."

"Macbeth is contending with the realities of this world, Hamlet with those of the next."

"We feel unsatisfied until we know ourselves akin even with that greatness which made the spots on which it rested hallowed; and until, by our own lives, and by converse with the thoughts they have bequeathed us, we feel that union and relationship of the spirit which we seek."

"From the wrestling of his own soul with the great enemy, comes that depth and mystery which startles us in Hamlet."

"Often and often must he have thought, that, to be or not to be forever, was a question, which must be settled; as it is the foundation, and the only foundation upon which we feel that there can rest one thought, one feeling, or one purpose worthy of a human soul."