A precedent embalms a principle.

Those who cannot themselves observe can at least acquire the observation of others.

Nature is stronger than education.

I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.

Knowledge must be gained by ourselves. Mankind may supply us with facts; but the results, even if they agree with previous ones, must be the work of our own minds.

A person's fate is their own temper.

We are now in want of an art to teach how books are to be read rather than to read them. Such an art is practicable.