“It is our duty to concentrate all our influence to make popular that which is sound and good, and unpopular that which is unsound. ”

“By doing well the duty which is nearest to us, the duty which is in our hands, we make ourselves stronger”

“We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.”

“For our duties and our needs, in all the fundamental things for which we were created, come down in practice to the same thing.”

“[I]t is the writer's duty to write fiction which promotes virtue, the good, the beautiful, and above all, the true. ... It is the writer's duty to hate injustice, to defy the powerful, and to speak for the voiceless. To be ... the severest critics of our own societies.”

“Our sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take the place of dilettanteism and make us feel that the quality of our action is not a matter of indifference.”