Every child was taught from his cradle that money was Mammon, the chief agent of the flesh and the devil. As he grew up it was his duty as a Christian and a gentleman to appear to despise filthy lucre, whatever his secret opinion of it might be.

One sees that dead, vacant look steal over the rarest, finest of women's faces . . . in the very midst, it may be, of their warmest summer's day; and then one can guess at the secret of intolerable solitude that lies hid beneath the delicate laces . . .

Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people has worked down, for good or evil; fermented, instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass."

Be just -- not like man's law, which seizes on one isolated fact, but like God's judging angel, whose clear, sad eye saw all the countless cankering days of this man,s life. . ..

While the light burning within may have been divine, the outer case of the lamp was assuredly cheap enough. Whitman was, from first to last, a boorish, awkward poseur.