I am grateful that I am not as judgmental as all those censorious, self-righteous people around me. In each of us there is a little of all of us.

To write brashly about some things, it is almost necessary not to know much about them.

It is a sure evidence of a good book if it pleases us more and more as we grow older.

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.

Deliberate virtue is never worth much: The virtue of feeling or habit is the thing.