Music is perpetual, and only the hearing is intermittent.

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke strops our vice.

If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.

I confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in philanthropic enterprises.... While my townsmen and women are devoted in somany ways to the good of their fellows, I trust that one at least may be spared to other and less humane pursuits. You must have a genius for charity as well as for anything else. As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

How imperceptibly the first springing takes place!

I do not value any view of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very largely and absorb much of the attention. Man is but the place where I stand, and the prospect hence is infinite.