There have been many men who left behind them that which hundreds of years have not worn out. The earth has Socrates and Plato to this day. The world is richer yet by Moses and the old prophets than by the wisest statesmen. We are indebted to the past. We stand in the greatness of ages that are gone rather than in that of our own. But of how many of us shall it be said that, being dead, we yet speak?

What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away.

That state of mind in which a man is impressed with invisible things is faith.

Why is not a rat as good as a rabbit? Why should men eat shrimps and neglect cockroaches?

To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.

The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a But.

No cradle for an emperor's child was ever prepared with so much magnificence as this world has been made for man. But it is only his cradle.