Men educate each other in reason by contact or collision, and keep each other sane by the very conflict of their separate hobbies. Society as a whole is the deadly enemy of the particular crotchet of each, and solitude is almost the only condition in which the acorn of conceit can grow to the oak of perfect self-delusion.

Heroism is no extempore work of transient impulse--a rocket rushing fretfully up to disturb the darkness by which, after a moment's insulting radiance, it is ruthlessly swallowed up,--but a steady fire, which darts forth tongues of flame. It is no sparkling epigram of action, but a luminous epic of character.

There is a natural disposition with us to judge an author's personal character by the character of his works. We find it difficult to understand the common antithesis of a good writer and a bad man.

A nation may be in a tumult to-day for a thought which the timid Erasmus placidly penned in his study more than two centuries ago.

Pretension is nothing; power is everything.

Even in social life, it is persistency which attracts confidence, more than talents and accomplishments.

A thought embodied and embrained in fit words walks the earth a living being.