The enthusiast has been compared to a man walking in a fog; everything immediately around him, or in contact with him, appears sufficiently clear and luminous; but beyond the little circle of which he himself is the centre, all is mist and error and confusion.

Some men are very entertaining for a first interview, but after that they are exhausted, and run out; on a second meeting we shall find them flat and monotonous; like hand-organs, we have heard all their tunes.

The acquirements of science maybe termed the armor of the mind.

He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool.

He that can enjoy the intimacy of the great, and on no occasion disgust them by familiarity, or disgrace himself by servility, proves that he is as perfect a gentleman by nature as his companions are by rank.

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed.