Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

If you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it.

Subtract from the New Testament the miraculous and highly impossible, and what will be the remainder?

Scepticismcan never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill.

... it is one of the gains of advancing age that the good of young creatures becomes a more definite intense joy to us. With that renunciation for ourselves which age inevitably brings, we get more freedom of soul to enter into the life of others; what we can never learn they will know, and the gladness which is a departed sunlight to us is rising with the strength of morning to them.

People who write finely must not expect to be left in repose; they will be molested with thanks, at least.

I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion-the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That's the steam that is to work the engines.