Men are as innocent as the morning to the unsuspicious.

If I thought that I could speak with discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I should praise them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to be the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken.

Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.

A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile as a fungus or a lichen.

Every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us.

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left.

After all, I believe it is the style of thought entirely, and the style of expression, which makes the difference in books.