The strangest whim has seized me ... After all I think I will not hang myself today.

There is no such thing as education. The thing is merely a loose phrase for the passing on to others of whatever truth or virtue we happen to have ourselves. It is typical of our time that the more doubtful we are about the value of philosophy, the more certain we are about the value of education. That is to say, the more doubtful we are about whether we have any truth, the more certain we are (apparently) that we can teach it to our children.

What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty except the liberty to make laws? The liberty to make laws is what constitutes a free people.

There must be some good in the life of battle, for so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers.

Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it.

Whatever the word "great" means, Dickens was what it means.

What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.