If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

Whatever torch we kindle, and whatever space it may illuminate, our horizon will always remain encircled by the depth of night.

I believe a person of any fine feeling scarcely ever sees a new face without a sensation akin to a shock, for the reason that it presents a new and surprising combination of unedifying elements.

A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument--a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself--in soli tude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.

To free a man from error is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to the man who harbors it.