Edged tools are dangerous things to handle, and not infrequently do much hurt.

There was no escape from the letter-writer who, a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five years ago, captured a coveted correspondent. It would have been as easy to shake off an octopus or a boa-constrictor.

Books that children read but once are of scant service to them; those that have really helped to warm our imaginations and to train our faculties are the few old friends we know so well that they have become a portion of our thinking selves.

We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.

Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture.

It is because of our unassailable enthusiasm, our profound reverence for education, that we habitually demand of it the impossible. The teacher is expected to perform a choice and varied series of miracles.

It is difficult to admonish Frenchmen. Their habit of mind is unfavorable to preachment.