Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.

The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever.

Whether he sleeps or wakes,--whether he runs or walks,--whether he uses a microscope or a telescope, or his naked eye,--a man never discovers anything, never overtakes anything, or leaves anything behind, but himself. Whatever he says or does, he merely reports himself. If he is in love, he loves; if he is in heaven, he enjoys; if he is in hell, he suffers. It is his condition that determines his locality.

How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?

When any real progress is made, we unlearned and learn anew what we thought we knew before.

We are more anxious to speak than to be heard.