It is better sometimes not to follow great reformers of abuses beyond the threshold of their homes.

Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge....wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be. Just because Miss Brooke was hasty in her trust, it is not therefore clear that Mr. Casaubon was unworthy of it.

What courage and patience are wanted for every life that aims to produce anything!

Hear Everything and judge for yourself

It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man's death hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred too.

Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.

All writing seems to me worse in the state of proof than in any other form. In manuscript one's own wisdom is rather remarkable to one, but in proof it has the effect of one's private furniture repeated in the shop windows. And then there is the sense that the worst errors will go to press unnoticed!