51 Quotes by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

There may be phrases which shall be palaces to dwell in, treasure-houses to explore; a single word may be a window from which one may perceive all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them. Oftentimes a word shall speak what accumulated volumes have labored in vain to utter: there may be years of crowded passion in a word, and half a life in a sentence.

It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of Grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards.

After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence.

What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow of a mother's love, fixed in permanent outline forever?

All... religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the rest. Test each sect by its best or its worst as you will, by its high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But falsehood begins when you measure the ebb of any other religion against the flood-tide of your own. There is a noble and a base side to every history.

There is no defense against adverse fortune which is so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.

Great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks; they are the summits of ranges.

Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes....

Fields are won by those who believe in the winning.