“Great are my riches.”

Her delighted response to receiving a large gift of books, revealing how readily she measured wealth in reading · Letter to an Oberlin friend, 1874

• Books
• Gratitude
• Reading

“Hopeless visionary, am I not?”

A self-aware acknowledgement of the imaginative temperament that made her feel different from those around her · Letter to an Oberlin friend, 1874

• Identity
• Imagination
• Society

“My birthdays are the most melancholy days I know.”

Reflecting her youthful tendency to greet the passage of time with introspection rather than celebration · Letter to an Oberlin friend, 1874

• Age
• Sadness
• Time

“I think I never was young.”

A strikingly early expression of the seriousness and inwardness Thomas felt even before turning twenty · Letter to an Oberlin friend, 1874

• Age
• Childhood
• Identity

“There is nothing duller than the habitual liar, who is so from the mere love of falsehood.”

A concise judgement on how habitual dishonesty diminishes character · Essay, Truth and the White Lie: A Conversation, 1895

• Character
• Morality
• Truth

“Throughout the winter, nature's active and crescent principle seems never held wholly in abeyance.”

Finding persistent life and renewal beneath the apparent stillness of winter · Prose, The Round Year, 1886

• Change
• Hope
• Nature