“How far the individual can ever be justified in following the dictates of his private judgment, in opposition to the laws and prevalent opinions of his time and country, must remain a question.”

Framing the conflict between individual conscience and social convention · Biography, George Eliot (1883)

• Freedom
• Truth

“There is no reason why the moral ideals of one generation should not become the stepping-stones toward their realisation in another.”

Expressing faith that moral imagination can become social reality across generations · Lecture, Shelley's View of Nature Contrasted with Darwin's (1886)

• Hope
• Time
• Truth

“For widely as they differ from each other, they yet have one thing in common—that passionate, that all-absorbing love of Nature.”

Identifying love of nature as a shared force among otherwise very different poets · Lecture, Shelley's View of Nature Contrasted with Darwin's (1886)

• Love
• Nature
• Poetry