The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.

So far as inland discovery was concerned, the adventurous spirit of the English was that of sailors who land but for a day, and their enterprise the enterprise of traders.

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

I think it will be found that he who speaks with most authority on a given subject is not ignorant of what has been said by his predecessors. He will take his place in a regular order, and substantially add his own knowledge to the knowledge of previous generations.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

Here I am thirty-four years old, and yet my life is almost wholly unexpanded. How much time is in the germ! There is such an interval between my ideal and the actual in many circumstances that I may say I am unborn.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.