Walt Whitman defended the sacredness of love, the purity of passion - the passion that builds every home and fills the world with art and song.

Nothing has been left undone by the enemies of freedom. Every art and artifice, every cruelty and outrage has been practiced and perpetrated to destroy the rights of man. In this great struggle, every crime has been rewarded and every virtue has been punished.

Music was born of love. Had there never been any human affection, there never could have been uttered a strain of music.

Language is not subtle enough, tender enough, to express all that we feel; and when language fails, the highest and deepest longings are translated into music. Music is the sunshine - the climate - of the soul, and it floods the heart with a perfect June.

There is more real devotional feeling summoned from the temple of the mind by great music than by any sermon ever delivered.