In their hearts are no memories of the past, in their brains no dreams of the future.
All that is lovable, beautiful, worthy, they have put far away from them; against all things that are pleasant to look upon, and all sounds that are music to the ear, they have barred their massive doors and reared their relentless walls of stone forever.

They have banished the tender grace of life and left only the sapped and skinny mockery.

Their lips are lips that never kiss and never sing; their hearts are hearts that never hate and never love; their breasts are breasts that never swell with the sentiment, "I have a country and a flag." They are dead men who walk.
I set down these first thoughts because they are natural--not because they are just or because it is right to set them down.

It is easy for book-makers to say "I thought so and so as I looked upon such and such a scene"-- when the truth is, they thought all those fine things afterwards.
One's first thought is not likely to be strictly accurate, yet it is no crime to think it and none to write it down, subject to modification by later experience.

These hermits are dead men, in several respects, but not in all; and it is not proper, that, thinking ill of them at first, I should go on doing so, or, speaking ill of them I should reiterate the words and stick to them.