“There is a poetical as well as a moral hypocrisy: and it is possible for the literary as well as the moral Pharisee to make void the living Law through dead tradition.”

Warning that inherited forms can become empty when detached from living truth · Lecture, Nature of Poetry, 1857

• Poetry
• Truth

“But a duty is not to be neglected because if ill-done it may produce evil: the obligation is to do it so well that evil may not accrue.”

Arguing that the risk of poor execution does not remove a genuine obligation · Letter home, January 1862

• Truth
• War

“In thinking of Truth it is to be borne in mind that we have nothing to do with things as they are, but with Things as they would appear to a perfect and perfectly healthy human Being.”

Locating human truth in the perceptions of an ideal human observer · Unpublished notes, Search for the Ideal

• Truth