“My veins are teeming with the quicksilver spirit which my mother gave me. Whatever I accomplish must be gained by ardor, and not by patience.”

Attributing creative energy to inherited temperament rather than steady application · Letter or personal reflection, as recorded in contemporary accounts

• Character
• Energy
• Inheritance

“I never sent you one of those homespun letters, in fact, without quite a persuasion that it will be the last. But life always seems to keep new, somehow; and a present hour always seems to me worthy any two of the past or the future.”

Valuing the living present over anticipated endings or past times · Letter from Idlewild, as published in Home Journal sketches

• Hope
• Life
• Present