Common sense is genius in homespun.

I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't.

The merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.

Knowledge keeps no better than fish.

Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.

In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows: for details are swallowed up in principles.

For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must be either new in itself or invested with some novelty of application to the new world of new times. Knowledge does not keep any better than fish. You may be dealing with knowledge of the old species, with some old truth; but somehow it must come to the students, as it were, just drawn out of the sea and with the freshness of its immediate importance.