The dead of midnight is the noon of thought.

Let us confess a truth, humiliating to human pride; - a very small part only of the opinions of the coolest philosopher are the result of fair reasoning; the rest are formed by his education, his temperament, by the age in which he lives, by trains of thought directed to a particular track through some accidental association - in short, by prejudice.

Man is the nobler growth our realms supply, And souls are ripened in our northern sky.

While Genius was thus wasting his strength in eccentric flights, I saw a person of a very different appearance, named Application.

You, that have toiled during youth, to set your son upon higher ground, and to enable him to begin where you left off, do not expect that son to be what you were, - diligent, modest, active, simple in his tastes, fertile in resources. You have put him under quite a different master. Poverty educated you; wealth will educate him. You cannot suppose the result will be the same.

The well taught philosophic mind To all compassion gives; Casts round the world an equal eye, And feels for all that lives.

it is, in truth, the most absurd of all suppositions, that a human being can be educated, or even nourished and brought up, without imbibing numberless prejudices from every thing which passes around him.