Henry Theodore Tuckerman

“To a nice ear, the quality of a voice is singularly affecting. Its depth seems to be allied to feeling; at least, the contralto notes alone give an adequate sense of pathos. They are born near the heart.”

“Tact is an essential principle of conversation; hence, the eastern metaphor which likens a word spoken in season, to "apples of gold in pictures of silver." The time and the society must regulate the subject.”

“It is amusing to detect character in the vocabulary of each person. The adjectives habitually used, like the inscriptions on a thermometer, indicate the temperament.”

“If conversation be an art, like painting, sculpture, and literature, it owes its most power charm to nature; and the least shade of formality or artifice destroys the effect of the best collection of words.”

“Without the definiteness of sculpture and painting, music is, for that very reason, far more suggestive. Like Milton's Eve, an outline, an impulse, is furnished, and the imagination does the rest.”

“A pilgrimage is an admirable remedy for over-fastidiousness and sickly refinement.”

“Travel gives a character of experience to our knowledge, and brings the figures on the tablet of memory into strong relief.”

“Our times might not inaptly be designated as the age of traveling. Its records form no insignificant branch of the literature of the day.”

“A work of art is said to be perfect in proportion as it does not remind the spectator of the process by which it was created.”

“Let us recognise the beauty and power of true enthusiasm; and whatever we may do to enlighten ourselves and others, guard against checking or chilling a single earnest sentiment.”

“There are beauties of character which, like the night-blooming cereus, are closed against the glare and turbulence of every-day life, and bloom only in shade and solitude, and beneath the quiet stars.”

“For Truth makes holy Love's illusive dreams,And their best promise constantly redeems.”

“There is a strength of quiet endurance as significant of courage as the most daring feats of prowess.”

“There is more or less of pathos in all true beauty. The delight it awakens has an undefinable and, as it were, luxurious sadness, which is perhaps one element of its might. It may be that this feeling springs from a sense of unattained good, of a perfection of being quite at variance with the present, which the beautiful never fails to suggest.”

“There is a policy in manner. I have heard one, not inexperienced in the pursuit of fame, give it his earnest support, as being the surest passport to absolute and brilliant success.”

“Credulity is perhaps a weakness almost inseparable from eminently truthful characters.”

“Give me the boon of Love!   I ask no more for Fame;Far better one unpurchased heart   Than Glory's proudest name.Why wake a fever in the blood,   Or damp the spirit now,To gain a wreath whose leaves shall wave   Above a withered brow?”